


The Sorcerer's Apprentice

by TheBigCat



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Epic Friendship, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Magic, Storytelling, Swordfighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22375075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBigCat/pseuds/TheBigCat
Summary: She arrives in mid-February with a streak of blue in her hair and a sword sheathed neatly across her back – and that’s only the beginning.
Relationships: Blair Kenneth & The Master
Comments: 6
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eldritch_reyni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritch_reyni/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Hereafter Volume Three](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18685606) by [eldritch_reyni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritch_reyni/pseuds/eldritch_reyni). 



> Hi, Rae! Last year, I sat down to write a few thousand words of EITU AU!fic as a Christmas gift, and several months later, this absolute monstrosity was sitting in front of me. Hopefully it’s not too horrifically long. 
> 
> To anyone else – this is a fic based off rae_marie’s excellent [‘Echoes In The Universe’](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1108995) series. I’m afraid that it might not make all that much sense if you’re unfamiliar with it – and also, it’s really really super good. So go check that out for a) context and b) excellent characters and wonderful plots and GREAT character dynamics. 
> 
> Now that you’ve gone and read that – all the chapters are written! I’ll be posting them as I edit them, so this should be all uploaded within a week or so! Enjoy and also I love you!

The morning is clear and bright and crisp, and on this particular clear, bright morning, the sorcerer is sitting at the wrought-wooden desk in the corner of his cave with a long staff on his lap and a book on one hand. He’s poking at the crystal at the tip of the staff with one finger, and occasionally sparks shoot out of his finger and occasionally sparks shoot out of the end of the staff as well, and it’s unclear if either of these things are actually supposed to be happening or not, because the sorcerer’s frown is just getting deeper and deeper. He mutters angrily to himself, and flips to a new page in the book, peering at it intently. Calibrating the staff properly is tricky work, and a task that should be undertaken with some amount of regularity, and he’s left off doing it for far, far too long.

It's while working on this highly technical and difficult task that she first approaches him.

“Hello?” says a voice from outside. A youthful sort of voice. Slightly tentative, but nonetheless clear and audible.

The sorcerer looks up from his book and his staff with some annoyance. “Go away,” he calls back. “I’m not to be disturbed, especially not now.”

“Hi!” says the voice. “Sorry – are you busy? I can come back later!”

He debates for a moment whether or not to actually respond – because doing so would involve engaging a stranger in concentration. “I _am_ busy,” he says eventually, loudly. “And do feel free to leave. But don’t come back!”

“I really need to talk to you, though –”

He groans. This is one of the persistent ones, of course it is. He rises to his feet, sweeps up his staff, and stalks over to the entrance. He pulls aside the curtain of fabric that separates his house and the rest of the woods with one sharp tug, and slams his staff against the ground. A flare of light and smoke goes up all around him, which usually is enough to scare off most intruders. “ _Leave,_ ” he growls, letting his voice echo around the clearing his cave is housed in.

He hears a small, involuntary squeak of fear, but as the smoke and light fades away, he’s somewhat bemused to see that his unwelcome visitor is still here. He sees bright green eyes and ginger hair with a strange streak of color running down one side of it and – well, it’s a young girl. He isn’t all that adept in the ask of identifying the ages of people at a glance, but he’d hazard a guess that she’s at the age that most people would say is the wrong one for adventuring in the woods, alone. (He wouldn’t object, usually, but these are _his_ woods. And he’s not all that fond of visitors.)

The moment she sees him, a peculiar array of emotions go scattering across her face – fear? Is that fear? It probably is, and it wouldn’t surprise him in the least – but then she’s bouncing on her toes and beaming at him. “Hi! Hello! Um, do you live here?”

He blinks at her – once, twice, and then, cautiously: “yes. I do.”

He notices, as he looks her over, that there’s a sword across her back. She’s also wearing simple leather armor, of a sort; and a look of immense determination. She looks, he thinks, like the tiniest, strangest knight he’s ever seen.

“Oh, great,” she says. “For a moment I thought I’d taken a wrong turn. It’s nice to meet you!”

“Haven’t you heard there’s a mad sorcerer of great and terrible with no sense of moral right or wrong who lives in these woods?” he says, looking down at her. “Rumors say that he kills indiscriminately for sport, casts horrible curses on people that annoy him in the slightest, and eats babies because he enjoys the _crunch_ of their _bones_.” He puts particular emphasis on the last part, hoping to frighten her away. She’s young enough. It just might work.

“Yes, I had heard about that,” says the girl. There’s no trace of fear in her eyes in the least. She looks up at him curiously. “Is that you?”

The side of his mouth twitches upwards slightly. “I suppose it must be. I haven’t met any other mad sorcerers in these woods.”

“You’re a mad sorcerer? You don’t look very mad to me.”

“Oh, I am mad,” he says dryly. “I’m absolutely furious, in fact. Mainly due to the large amount of people, such as yourself, who never can seem to take a hint and _leave me alone_.” He whirls around, and re-enters his cave. Unfortunately, he hasn’t quite got around to installing anything like a door in the mouth of the cave, so he can’t slam it behind him pointedly, but he does settle for pointedly wrenching the curtain of fabric back into place behind him.

He waits for a second or two, but doesn’t hear the sound of retreating footsteps. He decides that he doesn’t have the time to wait around to hear her leaving, especially when it’s inevitable that she’s going to do it anyway at some point, so he heads back to his desk, scooping up his book. He peers at the page where he last left off, and then flips all the way back to the index. He twirls his staff absently in one hand, humming discontentedly to himself as he reads through the listed words.

“So, are the rumours true?”

He doesn’t jump. He does _not_. That would mean that the strange girl with the streak of blue in her hair and the sword across her back sneaking into his home and appearing, near-silently, at his elbow had actually managed to startle him in some matter. His fingers curl around his staff, and he settles for fixing her with his sternest glare. “It’s often considered impolite to intrude in another person’s home, my dear, especially when they’ve just explicitly requested that you remove yourself from their presence.”

“Sorry,” she says, although she doesn’t sound entirely sorry. “Are they true?”

“Are what true?”

“The rumours. You know – curses, baby-eating-?”

He decides that she must be extremely brave, or extremely stupid indeed. He isn’t quite sure if the distinction between the two matters. “Are you trying to decide if my reputation’s well-deserved or not? Because I assure you, I am precisely as fearsome as they say I am. I can and will destroy you in a second, if you’re looking to prove anything.”

“I’m just curious,” she says. “People mentioned a lot of things about you when I was at the castle, and I thought, well, they can’t _all_ be right. So!” She shrugs. “I’m fact-checking at the source.”

He eyes her for a second. She really does seem genuinely curious. She’s glancing around the interior of his home, gaze lingering on some of the more unusual items. He sighs.

“Well, to tell the truth, killing for sport sounds... distinctly exhausting. And not at all fun. So, no. I don’t do that. I simply don’t have the time or magic to go around cursing anyone who annoys me, because quite a lot of people end up annoying me, and I doubt having everybody in the country under some curse or another would be very fun for anybody, including me. And,” he adds, with a hint of a wicked smile, “I’ve never eaten a baby that didn’t have it coming.”

“That was a joke,” she says after a second, frowning.

“It was,” he agrees.

“It wasn’t a very funny one.”

He sighs. “No,” he says. “I suppose it wasn’t.” He reads a few more lines, and he realizes that the book he’s paging through is completely useless to his purposes. “Your goal's accomplished. You've confirmed that I'm not nearly so murderous as everybody else would seem to believe. Now, are you going to leave or not?”

“That wasn't why I came here,” says the girl. “Well, not the whole reason I came here. I actually came to ask you something.”

“You came to ask me something,” he repeats neutrally. He snatches up a volume from the nearest shelf, and holds it up to examine it thoroughly. And then he looks over to examine her, equally as thoroughly. She's certainly persistent, if nothing else. And despite him being as intimidating as he can possibly be without outright attacking her, she hasn't reached for the sword on her back even once. In fact, she seems perfectly content to meet his eyes directly in a way that most people far older than her are almost never inclined to do. She seems vaguely nervous, of course, but he can hardly fault her for that. “Ask away, I suppose.”

She takes a breath in, and keeps on looking him dead in the eye. “I need you to teach me how to do magic,” she says, like she's asking for piano lessons.

He blinks. “You want – I'm sorry, what?”

“Magic,” she says, and pauses for a split second. When he doesn't say anything at first, she continues on in a rush – “I know you can do it, and I know you're really good at it, and I really, really need to learn, so – please? I can pay you back or something – help you clean around your house, or cave, I guess? Or I can go on a quest and get you things you need, whatever you want –”

“Stop,” he orders, holding up a hand. She obligingly falls silent, and just looks at him, waiting for an answer. “What – what in the name of, well, _anything_ , would possess you to ask for magic lessons from _me_ , of all people?”

“You seem nice,” she says, so cheerfully and brightly that he almost believes her for a second, and then he remembers who he actually is and has to take a step back, both mentally and physically.

“There are many, many other sorcerers and wizards in this wretched land who would be a lot happier than I to teach you any number of spells and sorcery,” he tells her. “You'd be better off looking elsewhere for a mentor. I am _immensely_ unsuitable.”

“I know,” she says. “I don't want them. I want you.”

He takes a deep breath in, and lets it out. “There is a wizard, at the castle –”

“I know,” she says, interrupting. “I met him! He was also really nice.”

“And he wasn't willing to take you on as an apprentice?”

“He recommended you,” she tells him.

He gives her his most distinctly unimpressed look, and says, “ _really_ ,” with enough scepticism to shatter rocks at several paces.

“Well, no – he told me to stay as far away from you as possible if I valued my life,” she says. “But that seemed like a friendship challenge to me. And I really like friendship challenges.”

He stares at her for another few seconds. “Young lady, you astound me,” he says flatly. “And not necessarily in a good way.”

She seems to take it as a compliment anyway, beaming and bouncing lightly on her feet. She’s so _bouncy_ it seems almost criminal. No one person should have that much bright energy. “Thanks!” she says. “I like your neckerchief! It’s pretty.”

His hand goes up to the bright yellow scarf looped around his neck almost instinctively, and thinks, _oh_. “Thank you,” he says – but, no – he steadfastly refuses to be charmed by the compliment. “This changes nothing, however. I have no intention of teaching you, or anyone else, magic – now, or ever. Now, if you would kindly leave? I'd hate to have to force you out.”

She stands her ground doggedly, and looks up at him pleadingly. “Please...?”

He sighs, and puts his current book to one side. “You are dreadfully persistent, aren't you?” he says.

“Yep, people tell me that a lot.”

He stops for a moment, and then beckons her over to his desk before gesturing for her to take a seat at his usual working chair. She does so immediately, no doubt thinking that he's caved into her demands and politeness and compliments.

“Since you're so keen to learn magic,” he says kindly, “I have something to show you. Pay close attention,” he adds.

She nods eagerly, balancing herself on the center of the chair, a hand on either side of the seat. “Go ahead,” she says.

He smiles, a bit grimly, and catches her in his most entrancing stare. Her eyes, brown and trusting, are caught in his, and he can feel the exact moment it happens – sees them go glazed and dreamy. It's simple - almost too simple. “Go back, my dear,” he says, calm and measured and reasonable. “Go home. Forget about this and never come back here. Do you understand me?”

She opens her mouth like she's going to respond – and then her face twists up in a frown and she doesn't.

“ _Do you understand me?”_ he repeats.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, but – no, I'm not going to.”

He feels the thready, distant pull of annoyance. “You _will_ obey me,” he insists, falling back on his familiar, powerful mantra. Not many people can resist it, after all.

“No,” she says. Her eyes snap away from him for a brief second, and then back to him, and the dull, glazed look in them is gone and they're bright and intelligent once more. “No! I don't think I will!”

He's impressed, despite himself. He takes a step back, and takes a deep breath so he can regain his balance, and then he looks over at her again and she's standing up from the chair, brushing nonexistent dust off her tunic.

“That was not nice,” she says to him, almost sternly. “I would have left if you'd asked nicely, you know.”

“My apologies,” he says, and he's surprised to note that he actually means it, and then, with a hint of skepticism, “would you have, though?”

“Probably not,” she says with an optimistic sort of shrug. She takes a step towards the entrance of the cave, and then pauses, and says, “I'm leaving now.”

“Good,” says the sorcerer.

“But it's only because I want to leave,” she says. “Not because you made me.”

“That is noted and appreciated,” he says.

She points at him. “I _will_ be back,” she says, sounding deadly serious about it. “I need to learn magic. I really, really do.”

He leans on his staff. “And I, in turn, really, really, hope that you won't hurry to return. I have much I need to accomplish, and it is rather difficult with unwelcome visitors making unsolicited magic lesson requests. I’m sure you understand.”

She just gives him a look that’s very difficult to read, even for him – gives him a cheery wave of farewell, and then disappears. He listens, and hears the sound of her boots tramping through the undergrowth and away from him until he can’t hear her anymore, and then he just stands there for another few minutes, marvelling at how strangely quiet his home is now and wondering just how much he really likes it that way.

⁂

He's about as surprised as he probably should be when the girl shows up again the next day – which is to say, not in the slightest. It's mid-afternoon, and he's in the vegetable patch around the side of the cave, humming to himself as he tugs and prises up weeds from where they've wormed themselves around heads of lettuce and the leafy mounds that indicate there's carrots buried beneath the soil. He could do it all in an instantly with the use of magic, of course, but there's something relaxingly mundane about the tedium of gardening by hand. He's halfway done with working through his tomato patch when he feels the distinct prickling of someone else's presence up-and-down his spine, and he looks over, and there she is, sitting on a rock and fiddling with the drawstring that runs up and down one of her boots.

“You have a vegetable garden?” she says, both sounding and looking like she’s trying not to laugh.

“Obviously,” he says, and extracts a particularly tenacious weed from the ground with a slight grunt of effort. He discards it, then lifts up a juicy-looking tomato, still attached to the stalk. He examines it. “Here. Hold these,” he says. “Make yourself useful.”

She hops off the rock, trips over in his direction, and holds out her hands as he starts twisting and plucking the ripe tomatoes off and piling them up in her arms. She curls her elbows inwards, readjusting her grip so they don't fall to the ground. “Aren't you afraid that this'll ruin your reputation as a fearsome, deadly wizard?”

“Not particularly,” he says dryly, adding a few more tomatoes to the pile. “Nobody tends to get close enough to find out about it.” He looks over, tallies up the haul in his head, and moves onto the cucumbers. “And you don't seem like the sort to go running your mouth to everybody in sight about my 'secret soft side', or whatever you think this is supposed to be.”

“I don’t?” She bobs down slightly to let him stack a few more vegetables on top of the quickly growing pile. It's unnecessary, of course; he's far taller than her, but it's the thought that counts. Or something along those lines. “What makes you so sure?”

“Well, the fact that you're back, for one.” He tucks a large, leafy head of lettuce in the crook between the current vegetable pile and her chest, and then adds a beetroot or two for good measure. “If your goal was to expose the rumors, you've already succeeded. You met me and survived. Quite the accomplishment.”

“Thanks, I think,” she says.

He looks at her, and fights back a smile that she probably wouldn't be able to see anyway. Her face is barely visible behind a veritable mountain of fresh produce. She's visibly struggling to keep it all upright and balanced, but she hasn't complained in the least yet. “Do you think you can handle a watermelon?”

“I can _try_ ,” she says with admirable determination.

She does, in fact, manage to balance a watermelon along with the rest of their considerable haul, and actually manages fairly well as the sorcerer leads her back to his cave.

“You could carry some, too,” she says at his back with an audible huff to her voice.

“I _could_ ,” he agrees. “But I’m not going to. And quite frankly, that’s what you get for invading my home for a second time in as many days.”

“I have to carry your groceries around for you?”

“Precisely,” he says, and parts the curtain so she can totter along inside. “Come along – just through here. Set them down on the table – right over there, yes. Excellent. Now, either you can leave me in peace, or you can help me cut up this watermelon, and I’m already fairly certain which one of those you’re going to pick.”

He’s right, of course, because she immediately asks him where he keeps his knives, and sets about the task of carving up the sizable watermelon with almost comical seriousness. She saws it painstakingly in half, and then half again, and then starts cutting out quarter-circle slices as evenly as she can.

He sits down, and watches her. “Your name?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“May I have your name, please?” He repeats. “I assume you have one.”

“Oh! It’s – “ She pauses her watermelon-carving, and then narrows her eyes at him before grinning and pointing at him with the tip of the knife. “Nope! I know this one; can’t fool me like that, mister! You can’t _have_ my name, but you _may_ call me Blair! Blair Kenneth. That’s my – that’s what you can call me.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Clever; and it would no doubt have saved your life and possibly your soul if I _were_ fae in any sense of the word. Fortunately for you,” he adds, “I am not.”

“You’re not?” She looks an odd combination of relieved and disappointed.

“I am not,” he says. “Fairies can’t lie, as a general rule. I would find a life without that to be a miserable existence.”

She returns to cutting up the watermelon. “You lie a lot?”

“Oh, yes. It’s practically a hobby at this point.”

“That sounds pretty miserable as well,” she says, completely matter-of-factly. He’s silent for a moment or two, not entirely sure of how to respond to that, and while he’s thinking, she finishes one quarter of the watermelon. She leans over the table and presents him with a perfect slice. “Here.”

“...thank you, Miss Kenneth,” he says.

“Just Blair is fine,” she says, and takes a slice of her own. She demolishes it within seconds, beaming. “This is really nice! You grow all your food yourself?”

He nods. The watermelon slice hangs loosely from his fingers. “I’m very self-sustaining.”

“That’s cool,” she says. “Cool, but kind of lonely-sounding. Wait!” She sits up straighter, looking like she just remembered something very important. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Your name. What is it?”

“I don’t have one,” he says. He starts eating the watermelon slice. It is, indeed, really nice – perfectly sweet, if a bit warm from so much time out in the sun. Sometimes he astounds himself with his produce-growing skill, and today is definitely one of those times.

Blair looks immediately, properly devastated. She drops the new slice of watermelon she had been making a start on. “No name-? Did the fae steal it from you or something?! What happened?”

“Nothing quite so dramatic,” he says. “I just don't have one. Not anymore.”

“Oh,” she says, and then, “but, you _don't have a name_?”

“Not one I'm prepared to use, no,” he says, and then softens – just a bit, not too much – as he looks over at her and takes in her borderline-distraught expression. “It's not quite as bad as you might think, you know. If I really wanted one, I would have found one for myself. But I don't, and I haven't. As simple as that.”

“But – what do people _call_ you, then?”

“They don't, generally speaking,” he says. “I don't get many visitors, remember?”

“But – your friends...?”

“I don't have any.” The softness turns into genuine amusement as Blair openly gapes at him. “Frankly, I can't understand why you're so surprised. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm somewhat of a hermit.”

“I know, I just...” She stares at her abandoned slice of watermelon like it's suddenly gone rotten, and then up at him. “You can't just – not have a name! Names are powerful, they're important – and I can't just not call you anything, either!”

He notices that she's making the assumption that she's going to be around often enough for his lack of name to become a genuine issue, and then realizes that it's him and him alone that has the power to decide whether this assumption ends up being true or not. But before he can respond, she's getting to her feet and taking another slice of watermelon, and saying, “sorry, I've gotta go; I'll be back later, I promise! – I need to check something –” and then she's dashing out through the cave entrance and she's gone, leaving him to finish the rest of the watermelon on his own.

Which is fine, of course, because that's how he's always done it in the past.

⁂

Blair returns the next day with an old-looking satchel and an equally worn-looking red-trimmed cloak that she most certainly hadn't been wearing the day before, and seats herself in the sorcerer's kitchen like she lives there.

“That's a lovely cloak,” he says, by means of greeting. He comes and sits across from her, mildly curious as to what she's actually doing.

Blair nods, digging around in the satchel. “I know! The castle librarian caught me stealing books and said that, well, as long as I was heading out here alone, he might as well lend me his cool cape so I didn't freeze to death.”

“Stealing-?” He watches as she tugs a sizable tome from the satchel at last. “You know, I do have a dictionary of my own here.”

“Oh, right,” she says, and looks suitably abashed for a moment, before saying, “well, the librarian didn't mind. Not really. He said that it's good for an inquiring young mind such as mine to have such an interest in petty theft.”

“That does sound like something he would say, yes,” the sorcerer agrees. “And the satchel...?”

“That was from his friend,” Blair says. “She also approves of petty theft, but only when it’s from the librarian and long-dead tyrannical kings. She said that I could borrow it for as long as I wanted.”

“How nice of her,” he says, and watches her lick her finger, flip open the front cover of the dictionary, pick a random point in the large volume, and turn to it. “Dare I ask what, precisely, you’re doing with that dictionary?”

“Well, I’m going to flip to a completely random page every time I come here,” she says, “and whatever word I land on is going to be your name for that day.”

There is a brief pause.

“That is utterly ridiculous,” he tells her.

“Not having a name is equally as ridiculous,” she retorts, and jabs a fingertip at a random point in the page. She leans in close, squinting, and says, “'cloud',” before looking at him expectantly.

“My name is not _Cloud_ ,” he says with just a hint of righteous indignation.

“Then find a better one,” she says, and there's a hint of challenging steel behind her eyes. She just keep surprising him, honestly, even though he doesn't quite know what he should be expecting from her.

“I thought you were here to convince me to teach you how to do magic,” says the sorcerer, “not to bestow ridiculous nicknames upon my person.”

“Well, are you going to teach me magic?” she says, stowing the dictionary back in her borrowed satchel.

“No,” he says.

“Nicknames and home invasion it is then,” she says decisively, and beams up at him. “So, Mr Cloud –”

“I told you,” he says, exasperated, “that is very much not my name.”

“– you mentioned that you already had a dictionary? Does that mean you have other books, too? I saw a shelf yesterday, but it looked mostly like journals and stuff like that.”

“Of course I have books,” he says. “Not many that you'll be interested in, most likely – and the arcane tomes I am keeping far, far away from you.”

“Because you don't want me teaching myself magic from them?”

“Because I don't want you asking millions of questions about knowledge that I have no desire to share.”

She looks incredibly disappointed at this assertion, and he wonders why, exactly, it is that she wants to learn magic in the first place. But asking would mean opening up the possibility of her convincing him to actually do it, and he doesn't want to dig himself into that particular hole.

Instead, he eyes her, appraising – trying to figure out her potential tastes in fiction. “I – hm. I do have some folk tale collections,” he says. “You seem like the sort of young woman who'd appreciate that form of literature.”

Blair brightens instantly. “Yes, please! I don't really know what sorts of books normal people have around here! The castle library mostly has old history books and dusty tomes, and – well, that gets old fast.”

“I take it you can read,” he says, and rises to his feet to begin searching for the volumes in question. “It's a good skill to have. I'll find you those books,” he adds, “and you can leave me in peace.”

“I can read out in your garden,” she offers, a compromise. “And then give you the books back when I'm done.”

“Fine,” he says, caving more easily than he'd have expected himself to.

“And then you can teach me magic,” she says hopefully.

He shakes his head and laughs somewhat dryly. “Nice try, but no.”

Blair nods, _fair enough_. “Well,” she says, “folk tale books are a start, I guess.”


	2. Chapter 2

“If you really want to learn magic,” says the sorcerer a few days later – his name is ‘Smelting’ today, according to Blair, which is just as bad of a name choice as it sounds – as she’s helping him string up bird-feeders around the outskirts of his clearing, “ask the wizard at the castle. Ever since his apprentice ascended to godhood and disappeared into the nearby lake, he’s been remarkably gloomy.”

“I told you, I already did,” Blair says, checking to make sure the feeder she’s currently balancing in between branches is both full with seeds and fully secure.

He frowns. “And yet, you’re still here.”

“I am,” she agrees, and taps him lightly on the top of his head. “Okay, you can let me down now!”

He carefully kneels down, letting her hop off of his shoulders and to the ground. The good, sturdy branches are impossible for either of them to reach alone, and using magic in front of her would lead to much more magic-lesson pestering than already is taking place.

He straightens up, and she says, “actually, he taught me this!” before reaching forward and deftly snatching a shiny bronze coin from behind his left ear. She displays it proudly, sunlight glinting off it.

“Very nice,” he says dryly.

“But, wait!” she says. “There’s more!”

He watches in muted amusement as she tosses it up into the air and catches it, and shows off the new, identical coin that’s suddenly appeared with an exaggerated look of comic surprise. She closes her fist, opens it again, and then there’s three coins, and then tosses them up, _one-two-three_ , into the air, and they’re all gone. She spreads her fingers wide, wiggling them in the air.

He obligingly applauds. “Not quite the magic you were hoping to learn, I’ll wager,” he says.

“I don’t know, sleight-of-hand _is_ pretty cool,” she says, and flips her hand so one of her hidden coins is back in her palm. “But – no, he did try to teach me some actual magic. But it wasn’t the sort of magic I actually need.”

“And what sort of magic _do_ you need?” he asks, handing her another bird-feeder.

She vanishes the coin again; accepts it, looping the length of twine at its top around her hand, and frowns. “It’s... difficult to explain.”

“I'd appreciate it if you at least tried,” he says. “There's really no way I'm going to even consider helping you, otherwise.” This is partly a lie, because he’s not going to consider it anyway. He’s just really quite curious, and this happens to be the best way to find out _why._

She inhales and puffs her cheeks out before exhaling in a quick burst of air. “Home,” she says after a minute. “I want to get home.”

“And where is home?”

She just shakes her head. “I don't know. Not – I mean – well. I don't know, I really don't. Just, it's really far away.”

The sorcerer hesitates before moving over to the next tree along that he's marked for a bird-feeder, and saying, “you don't necessarily need to learn magic to do that.”

“No,” she says, following him. “You don't understand, it's not like that – I do. I really do.”

“That's not what I meant.” He kneels down, and she carefully steps up onto his shoulders, bird-feeder in hands and one hand on the tree in front of them to steady herself. He rises, carefully and elegantly, to his feet, and says, “I mean that I could easily cast the spell you require and get you wherever you need to go. No magic-learning required.”

“Oh!” she says, and nearly loses her balance for a moment – he has to grab onto her free hand to keep her from toppling off backwards. “That's – whoa. Thank you! Thank you so much, that means so, so much to me, you have no idea, but – but, it wouldn't work.” She sounds dejected at the very thought. “It's, well, it's complicated. You wouldn't know where it is, and just describing it to you wouldn't work.”

“These sound like excuses,” he notes, and watches as she loops the new bird-feeder into place with less nimbleness than previous iterations. “Excuses that someone with an ulterior motive would be making.”

“I know,” she says, and ties it off. “I'm sorry.”

He hums to himself, and then says, “I know that life can sometimes be convoluted and complicated. But this is – you understand my hesitation, yes?”

“I do,” she says, and then takes a moment of hesitation herself. “Honestly, I do. Look – just forget I asked, then. It's fine, I can work it out myself.”

“All right,” he says. “That sounds perfectly acceptable to me.”

She sighs, then checks the feeder's properly in place and then, as nimbly as a squirrel, grabs the branch above her, and swings herself up onto it. He lets out a wordless syllable of surprise and – damn it all, that's actually concern – but she's already pulling herself up into higher branches, working her way upwards.

“And just what do you think you're doing-?”

“I think I saw a bird nest!” she exclaims, and it seems like the previous topic really is forgotten now. “There might be eggs, or birds, or maybe baby birds! I'm just going to take a quick peek –”

He sighs, and resigns himself to the fate of hanging up the rest of the feeders himself with the aid of some magic. “Try not to disturb them too much,” he tells her.

“I won't!” she says eagerly, and keeps on climbing.

“And do be careful,” he adds without thinking.

“Don't worry,” she says. “I'm always careful!”

Which sounds remarkably like a lie to him, and he's really quite good at detecting lies in other people.

⁂

His name is 'Local' today, chosen by virtue of Blair's finger and a dictionary that seems hell-bent on spitting out words that are more and more unsuitable for naming usage as the days go by. He's not entirely sure why she continues to go through the ritual of picking a new name every morning – it's not as if she actually uses it all that much. Names aren't used very much when it's just two people talking. He's also not very sure why she actually keeps coming back. They've established by now that magic lessons are very much off the table, but Blair shows up almost every morning without fail – barring Tuesdays and Fridays, which are when she apparently works part-time in the castle library – and spends time with him and gives him space when he's in a mood, and – well, she hasn't brought it up since.

It's strange to think about, because the only possible reason she could be sticking around – apart from ulterior motives – is that she actually enjoys his company.

Which – preposterous, frankly.

He flips his staff in midair, sending it spinning and trailing sparks of light. “That sword,” he says, indicating the one that's perpetually strapped across her back when she's not helping him out with tasks that would require greater dexterity. “Is it just for show, or-?”

“I know how to use it,” she says, attention partly caught by the magical spectacle. Even if she isn't still asking for lessons, she still finds his infrequent uses of the stuff fascinating. He doesn't entirely mind, and sometimes idly wishes she _would_ comment on it. “If that's what you're asking. I think I'm pretty good, actually!”

“I have no doubt,” he says, and halts the staff. He checks it briefly, nods, and then holds out a hand to her. “May I see?”

“Sure!” She unsheathes it with one quick, practiced swipe, and hands it to him, hilt-first, which proves once again that she's just as smart as he knows she is. He turns it over, inspecting the blade closely. “This is exceptionally well-made,” he says.

“I know,” Blair says. “It's not mine, though.”

That's just one more strange thing about her. Most of her possessions, if not all of them, seem to be borrowed or gifted from some person or other. She does her best not to draw attention to it, but if asked, she'll happily give the origin or maker of whatever item he happens to be pointing out at the time. She seems to be surviving purely off the kindness of strangers and her own sparkling kindness, which often involves helping out those people in return.

Not for the first time, he wonders what she's doing in Albion on her own. When he had asked her about it, she had been uncharacteristically evasive and had said something along the lines of, _'I'm not alone, you're here with me!_ ' and promptly changed the subject.

“Where did you manage to find this?” he asks her.

“My friend gave it to me,” Blair says, and then, “oh, um – the lady who lives in the lake, just over-?” She waves vaguely in the direction of the east. “She’s, well – ”

“I know who she is,” he says. “She does have quite the reputation for handing out swords – but usually only to people who especially deserve them. She must like you.” He considers it again, and weighs it thoughtfully in one hand. Well-balanced, especially for a person of Blair’s size. He hands it back to her, and plucks his staff from mid-air. “Let’s see what you can do.”

She takes a step back, half-drawing her sword up to guard herself, and frowns. “Fight you – you, with the staff? I might cut it in half, though.”

He smiles, traces an outline in the air, and catches the blade that falls – entirely made out of a soft white light; the same general style as hers.

“ _En garde!_ ” she says, excitedly, and their swords clash. 

He finds her a mildly challenging opponent – but the objective is less to test his skill, and more to discern hers. And Blair really is good, as if she’s been practicing for years. He disarms her two times, although it takes some effort – and then she manages to do the same to him, twice in a row. With their final round, they find themselves somewhat locked in stalemate for a minute or two.

“You were paying attention,” he notes in approval.

“Had to get a hold on your fighting style,” she says, pressing forward. He parries and counters with ease. “You’re really good!”

“Mm – a bit rusty, I’m afraid. Not many people are willing to engage in sword-based duels with me.”

“I can’t imagine why not,” she says. 

She manages to disarm him this time, although it’s more by lucky coincidence than by design.

“Not bad,” he says. “Not bad at all.” He lets his light-sword disintegrate into sparks. He picks up his staff again. “Your footwork could use some improvement, I must admit.”

She groans, and shuffles backwards miserably. “Nooo, not the footwork!”

“It’s an integral part of the art of sword fighting,” he says, although he understands her reluctance. “Here, let me show you – ”

She’s a quick learner and an eager student – rather pointedly so, as if to say ‘I’d be the perfect magic student, if you’d just start teaching me’. He ignores the rather unsubtle hint, and continues coaching her with miscellaneous swordplay techniques. 

Teaching, as minor as it is, feels good, like a part of himself that he’s kept locked away for entirely too long. Imparting knowledge upon others, letting them in on secrets that nobody else would be able to teach – it feels warm and correct. It fits.

He ignores that too.

Teaching magic is something that he most certainly does not want to do. Warm and fuzzy feelings have absolutely no say in that.

⁂

The sorcerer has been waiting for Blair Kenneth for nearly an hour today, tapping his foot impatiently against the ground as he adjusts his cloak. She only needs to arrive, and then they can set off. She had expressed delight over the birds she had found in the trees around his home a few weeks earlier, and he knows of a place a short distance into the woods where many more reside. She doesn't know about this trip, and he doesn't intend to tell her where they're going until they arrive. It's – a surprise, he supposes. A pleasant one.

But it's been nearly an _hour_ , and he hasn't known her to be anything but devastatingly punctual in all the time that he's known her. He is starting to experience an emotion, and it takes him a moment to identify it. He thinks it might be annoyance, then realizes it's probably something else, and then decides that the best way to get rid of it is to go looking for her.

So he sets off into the woods, and is only walking along the path that she usually takes to get to his home for a few minutes when he hears the clash of steel-on-steel somewhere off to his right.

He freezes and cocks his head sharply to one side, and hears – distantly but distinctly – a familiar voice yelling wordlessly, in-between clashes. And then he's running. And that emotion from before? – he can identify it properly now, and it’s almost certainly concern. He doesn’t know what to make of that.

He stops at the edge of a gap in the trees, bracing himself on a thick branch, and he looks at what’s occurring, and he’s angry all of a sudden. Very, _very_ angry.

These woods _are_ dangerous, and not just because he’s in them. They’re located on the outskirts of the castle and the main town, which means that there’s almost always monsters and creatures and mercenaries of all kinds lurking in them, waiting for their next victim. Blair’s been remarkably lucky up to now – no doubt due to the rumors of the mad sorcerer’s existence keeping people away from her usual path – but now, it appears, that luck has run out.

Blair has her borrowed sword out in a defensive stance, and is facing down two men wearing a combination of run-down clothing and sturdy leather armor. Mercenaries, no doubt. It appears that they had tried to rob her for the little money she carries, but hadn’t reckoned on her fighting skill and unwillingness to let herself get held up in a forest path. She’s broken away from the fight, and although she’s panting and there’s a bruise forming on her left upper arm, looks mostly all right.

He meets her eyes from across the clearing, and he can tell she's seen and recognized him because she grins, clearly relieved. But quickly she stumbles backwards a few steps from the two mercenaries, schooling her face into an expression of absolute horror. “Oh no!” she exclaims, far too melodramatically to be actually convincing. “He's here!”

“What-?” goes one of the mercenaries.

Blair clasps a hand to her heart, eyes practically popping out of their sockets. “The Demon King of the Dark Woods!”

“The Demon King-?” he mutters to himself, bemused, but then shakes his head and decides to just go along with it. He taps his fingers in a quick four-beat rhythm along the end of his staff, thinking, then mutters a quick incantation under his breath. The shadows leap from every direction to envelop him in a thick, swirling cloak of darkness.

“I thought it was the mad sorcerer who lives in these woods,” the other mercenary is saying.

Blair visibly flounders for a second before recovering admirably, and saying, “there _was_ , but the Demon King ate him!”

“Uh-huh,” says one of the mercenaries, raising his cutlass again.

“No, really!” Blair says, even though her own hands are quickly tightening around her own sword. “There was a fearsome battle, and the sorcerer was strong and magical but not strong enough, and –”

The larger and stronger of the two mercenaries doesn’t seem to want to hear this, and he’s on her in an instant. Blair yelps and brings her sword up to block his attacking blow, and continues to successfully parry with noticeable skill. But his companion is clearly about to join the fray, and no matter how skilled Blair is, she almost certainly can’t fight off two bigger, stronger men for an extended period of time. Which means it’s time for some divine intervention – or the closest thing, anyway.

“ _Halt_ ,” the sorcerer orders, and the word comes out sharp and grating and twisted through the disguise – booming around the clearing like fractured thunder. He’s pleased to note that the two mercenaries do, in fact, freeze instantly. And Blair takes the opportunity of their momentary distraction to slip out of their immediate attacking range.

“He's come for me!” she shrieks like the unfortunate heroine of a tragic drama. “Run, while you still can!”

Behind the guise of darkness, the sorcerer smirks to himself, and then sweeps into view with an impeccable sense of immense gravitas and a nearly overwhelming sense of complete and utter doom surrounding him like mist.

“ _Your debt is due,_ ” he hisses, improvising wildly as he stalks towards Blair. “ _It is time for you to give up to me what is rightfully mine, my girl._ ”

“No!” she says, scrambling backwards. Her acting is improving as they continue this game. It’s still on the melodramatic side of unbelievable, but with the amount of effort he’s putting into this magical illusion, it shouldn’t matter either way. “No, you’ll never take me alive!”

“ _Then I shall take you dead,_ ” he says, already wincing at the stilted, hackneyed exchange of dialogue. He strides forward, the illusion rushing with him in a tangled mess of shadow and purple sparks. She gasps and tries to run away – but not _too_ hard.

Her sword goes scattering across the ground as she abruptly and bizarrely loses her grip on it, and she’s unlucky enough to get trapped against a tree by the Demon King, who’s already winding her into a tight, unbreakable embrace. Her head dips back and breaks through the outer skin of the magical glamour, and she sees him and manages a stressed smile.

“Are you all right?” he asks her as softly as he can.

“I'm great!” she says back, just as quietly, although he can feel her shaking slightly. “Can you do shadow tendrils or something?”

“Pardon me?”

“You know –” and here she yells out and jolts forwards as if trying to get away from him, without ever making an actual attempt at escape, “ – make it look a bit more, um – eldritch! That's super scary!”

“Well, let me see,” he says, and mutters a few words under his breath. The illusion comes alive with long dark appendages coiling out from within. With a twitch of his hand, one of them wraps its intangible way around Blair's stomach. He adds in an appropriately evil-sounding cackle, as distorted and warped as the rest of his speaking has been so far, for good effect.

Blair turns wide, haunted eyes onto the mercenaries. “Oh no,” she whispers theatrically. “You've made him _angry_.”

She then starts inching back into the dark writhing nest of the illusory Demon King, letting out screams and yells, and he takes her by the shoulders and starts pulling her in more smoothly.

“You don't think that you might be overdoing it, just a bit?” he murmurs, barely audible, as he gently drags her into her illusion, trying not to get hit by her wildly flailing arms. She doesn't respond, busy as she is with the task of selling this bizarre pantomime to their audience of two.

“Save yourselves!” she screams at the mercenaries, who both look appropriately horrified by this whole display. The sorcerer grins widely, unable to stop himself, as he continues to manipulate the glamour surrounding him to go feral with thrashing limbs and sparks of darkness flying out in every which way. Blair lets out a very convincing-sounding sob of terror and agony, and throws her hand out in the direction of the two mercenaries. “ _Remember me!_ ”

Blair can't see much of the illusion from the inside, which is why he throws quite a bit of blood and guts and gore into it as she provides bloodcurdling screeches as she's 'messily devoured'. It takes only a second or two of this for the mercenaries to turn tail and flee, screaming, towards the safety of the lower town and castle.

As soon as he's sure they're gone for good, the sorcerer lets the magic collapse around them. Blair stops screaming, and coughs a few times, rubbing at her throat. “Ow,” she says.

“I don't say this very often,” says the sorcerer, leaning against his staff, “about – well, anything at all, actually. But that _was_ quite a lot of fun.”

Blair falls inelegantly to the ground, legs sprawling out under her. She laughs shakily. “Um. Kind of, y-yeah.”

He frowns down at her. “Miss Kenneth –” he begins, then hastily corrects himself. “Blair. Are you quite all right?”

“Oh, I'm grand!” she says brightly, and then, almost immediately – and quite a bit more softly, too – “...actually, no. Not really. That was... really scary.” She shivers, and suddenly scrambles across the clearing floor in the direction of her sword. She snatches it up, fingers wrapping around the handle tightly, and closes her eyes tightly for a moment or two.

The sorcerer hesitates for only a second before coming over to sit on the ground next to her. “Yes. I can imagine,” he says, “I'm very sorry that had to happen to you. None of that could have been pleasant.”

She flashes him a weak smile. “Oh, it was fine once you showed up!” she says. “I knew you wouldn't let anything happen to me, and – honestly, it was kind of fun putting on a show with you like that. But, just – I – “ She shivers again. “– they cornered me, out of nowhere – I thought this forest was _safe_. And I thought I was going to die, alone, without –” She breaks off again, shaking her head repeatedly.

The sorcerer looks at her for a long second, and then says, “Blair.”

“Yeah?” she says, scrubbing roughly at her eyes and studiously not looking at him.

“Blair, I –”

He's silent for a second, and then he leans forward, extending an arm towards her. He moves slowly, telegraphing his motions so she has the opportunity to back away or refuse at any moment, but she doesn't – she just lets him carefully enfold her into a secure, tight hug.

“Thanks,” she whispers into his shoulder, hands coming up around his back. She doesn't say why she's thanking him, and he doesn't ask for clarification, either.

“With all luck,” he says after a few moments, “those men will end up spreading that delightful improvised rumor of yours around the region, and people will be even more reluctant to set foot into these woods.”

Blair snorts and then outright laughs into the fabric of his cloak. “I can't wait to hear what the – what Merlin thinks of that,” she says. “I think he's responsible for most of the stories about this place, anyway.”

It takes him a beat to puzzle out who she's talking about. “That's what he's calling himself these days?” he says. “Good grief.”

“Better than not having a name at all,” she says.

“Mm,” he says non-committally. He draws back from the hug, and then eyes her carefully before offering his hand. She takes it instantly, and he pulls her to her feet. “If you're not feeling too shaken from this entire experience – there's a location nearby that I rather wanted to show you. Otherwise, we can go back to my home – I can make some tea-?”

“No,” she says, takes a deep breath, and brushes her hair out her eyes. And, indeed, she looks better already “No, I'll be fine. What did you want to show me?

⁂

May arrives like a breath of fresh air, and on the afternoon very first day of it, Blair shows up at the sorcerer's doorstep with flowers braided through her hair and smelling like fresh herbs – looking windswept and out-of-breath, like she's run as fast as she could to get to his house.

“Hello, my dear,” he greets her. “You look especially floral today.”

“Lisar did my hair,” she says with a grin, tugging at the blue lock over her right eye – its color already beginning to fade and dull in tone as her hair grows out. There's several blooms of baby's breath woven through it, and a large rose tucked behind her ear. “It's the festival!”

“Aha,” he says, and reaches through a window to pick a bright yellow rose from the bushes just outside. “Beltane, of course.” He offers her the rose, and she accepts it with a little bounce of delight before tucking it firmly into a loop on her sword's sheath. “I nearly forgot – how very foolish of me.”

“Your name's Rose, today,” she tells him, indicating the flower.

“Very apt, considering the occasion,” he says, and goes to open up a calendar lying on the side of his desk, a calendar that he really doesn't need to check considering how well he knows it by now. “You should attend the festival – it's a spirited occasion,” he tells her, and smiles. “I suspect you'd enjoy it.”

“I know,” she says. “I was helping the druids and some of the other people at the castle set up – it's why I have all these flowers! They're building this huge bonfire in the middle of the town square. It looks _amazing_ , and there's all this delicious-smelling food, and –” she pauses, and takes a deep breath, “– and, actually, I came here to ask you – do you think you might want to come with me?”

His hand freezes over the page marked 'May 1st', and he stares at it for a few seconds, unblinking. “To the festival?”

“Uh-huh,” she says, tentatively hopeful. “I know you don't like people very much, but – if it was with a friend?”

Going to the festival, for the first time in years. It’s almost unthinkable, and there is a sizable part of him that wants to attend, just so he can see the delight in Blair’s eyes as she tugs him around the marketplace by the hand. _Maybe, just maybe – but – no._ He grimaces to himself, knowing that he's going to have to watch her face fall in disappointment, and turns to her. “Blair... I'm very sorry, but –” – and there it is. She's trying to hide it, but there's that unmistakable dimming of her mood. He feels like the very worst monster, even more so than usual. “– any other day I would accompany you without question. I need you to know that,” he says.

“Really?” she says, looking politely sceptical. She's very obviously trying to hide her dismay, and not doing an exceptional job of it.

“Really,” he says, and means it. “Next time, I _promise_ you. But Beltane is a... well, rather special day of the year, and I've somehow neglected to prepare for it this time around. I must conduct the necessary rituals, and it may take a while.” He taps the calendar page, marked up in detail with all manner of information and ingredients. “I’m sorry,” he says, and hopes she can see the genuine regret. It appears that she does, because she nods and gives him a _well-what-can-you-do_ kind of shrug. “Enjoy the festival, Blair.”

“I will,” she says, and then visibly hesitates, before adding, “or... I could stay here?”

“I can’t imagine why you would want to,” he tells her frankly, eyeing the page.

“You might need help?” she offers, even though it’s fairly evident that he doesn’t – he’s been able to do it himself for this long, after all. “And it’s not like I was planning on doing anything else today.”

There’s a pause.

“Blair,” he says, carefully incredulous. “I know for a fact that you have a multitude of friends at the castle, in the greater forest, and even in the nearby lake. All of them would be absolutely delighted to spend time with you tonight, and the majority of them would be far more agreeable company than I am.”

“...I know,” she says.

“You are friends,” he says, “with _Merlin._ You could attend the festival with him, or your druid friend, or the castle librarian, or – well, I’m confident at this point that you’ve even managed to befriend the king himself! The possibilities are endless!”

“Yeah,” she says, “but – you’re my friend, too. And you’re _here_.”

He stares at her for a second longer, and then he laughs. It’s partly astonished and partly delighted, but mostly astonished.

To put a long story short, Blair ends up staying.

There’s quite a lot to do, and he’s burnt a considerable amount of daylight already without even realizing it – having been caught up entirely in research of his own. It’s too late to collect the morning dew, and he has no May Tree or Thorn Tree to decorate, so he gives both up as lost causes, and decides to do what he can, with Blair as an eager assistant. They spend most of the afternoon preparing various kinds of foods, which they spoon into tiny bowls and place at the windows and doors and at various trees that he indicates with his staff.

“It’s always best to keep the Good Neighbours happy,” he tells her when she asks why, and this leads into a short lesson on the _aos sí,_ whom she seems slightly confused but mostly fascinated about.

As it’s drawing close to dusk, he gives her a bucket and tells her to go to the well at the far end of the garden, and bring back the first draw of water she takes from it – reminding her to be extra careful with it. While she’s doing that, he gathers up his favorite trowel and a sickle he rarely has reason to use, and goes looking for vervain at the edge of the forest.

Blair returns just as he’s plucking the purple flowers and cradling them in one hand – heaving a half-full bucket that’s dripping with water. “What next?” she asks eagerly, placing it on the ground at his feel.

“Grain,” he says. “We need grain. I think I have some in my cupboard – not too much, just a cupful.”

She nods. “I’ll get it! Anything else?”

“My staff – it should be near the coatrack,” he says, and then louder, after her retreating back, “Blair, slow down! You’ll trip and injure yourself!”

Blair does end up tripping, but no permanent injuries are incurred. She returns within minutes, and helps him gather up all the materials so they’re held roughly evenly between the two of them. Together, they head to the easternmost edge of the forest. The castle is just visible from here, distantly lit up in bright fiery light. It seems as if the evening festival is in full swing already.

“It isn’t too late to go,” he tells her.

She shakes her head. “I’d rather stay here with you.”

He raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment.

Instead, he takes the trowel from her, digs a small hole in the ground, and places grain and vervain before sitting back and beginning to murmur the familiar words of the ritual. He sees Blair watching him in fascination, her eyes wide in the darkness, and he raises his voice a little so she can hear it all properly. It’s a short blessing, and once it’s done he taps his staff on the ground firmly. The small offering goes up in flames, which he summarily douses with a sprinkle of the first well-water.

“What does that do?” she asks, following him as he leads her through the trees, heading south.

“It’s an old ritual – it protects produce and encourages farm fertility, as long as I complete it at all four cardinal points,” he says. “Which I intend to, tonight.”

“And – it works?” She sounds almost sceptical, a bit confused.

“It’s never failed me yet,” he says, casting a curious glance at her.

He performs the same ritual on the southernmost edge of the forest, and then the west, and as they reach the north, Blair hesitantly asks if she can help, because she’s done her best to memorize the words – and really, there’s not much she can get wrong with something as simple and minor as this, so he lets her.

She stumbles through the short blessing with almost comical seriousness – a few missteps and mispronunciations are made, but with this sort of thing, it’s more about the intent than the content, so the sorcerer feels entirely confident that this particular ritual will be no less functional than any other he’s done in the past.

“Very good job, Blair,” he says with a smile, and sets the final offering alight. She puts it out with a shake of the water-bucket. “I know it can’t have been all that entertaining, but thank you for accompanying me tonight.”

“Thanks! And don’t worry – this was kind of fun, actually!” she says. “Although I’m getting – well, I’m a bit cold.”

“It is growing rather chilly, isn’t it?” he says with a frown, noticing that she’s neglected to dress warmly – floaty dress, flowers still in her hair; she’s dressed more for a festival than for conducting protective rituals in the woods in the evening. He unhooks his cloak, throwing it over her shoulders. She makes a soft noise of surprise, and he rearranges it slightly. It’s several sizes too big for her.

“Thank you!” she says. “But won’t you be cold?”

“I’ll be fine,” he reassures her, hitching up the rest of their supplies in one arm. “Come along now, my dear – we’ll make a bonfire back near the cave.”

They make it back in less than fifteen minutes. Blair helps him build the bonfire, and then pulls a bundle out of her satchel. “Lisar gave it to me earlier,” she says, opening it, and then, “is this – cake?”

“Oatmeal cake,” says the sorcerer approvingly. “It seems as if your friend is well-informed. Here – we can heat it up over the fire.”

They do, and then Blair splits it between them. He shows her how to sacrifice bits of it to spirits, and other bits to various predators that could potentially cause them harm, and she soaks it all up with a genuine interest that astonishes him no matter how often he sees it from her. Normally he wouldn't be so cavalier about offering magic and magic-adjacent secrets up to her for free – the last thing he wants to do is become her magical teacher – but it's late, and the barriers between worlds are thin, and the light and heat from the fire make everything soft and hazy, so he thinks that it won't cause all that much harm, overall.

“But, I'm not sure I understand,” she says, nibbling on a chunk of the oatmeal cake. “How is burning up bits of food while naming animals going to do anything to stop them? You're not even using your staff or anything. Can magic still work even when you're just... saying things?”

“Well, it's closer to symbolic, than anything else,” he says, having already finished his own portion. “But symbolism tends to have a weight of its own when it comes to these sorts of matters.”

“Right! You mean how words have power, like you're always saying?”

“Precisely,” he says. “And on days like these, those words have even more power than usual.”

She squints into the flames, and wriggles a bit, curling his cloak tighter around her. “You mean the seasonal festivals? The librarian mentioned those. Are they important around here?”

“Mm.” He nods. “Well, in addition to the solstice festivals, they're the best days to conduct complex rituals, and – as you've seen already – tend to have rituals of their own bound into their passage, many of them specific to that one day in particular.” He raises four fingers up into the air, and the syllables trip seamlessly off his tongue. “Beltane, Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasadh.”

She's rapt, giving him her absolute undivided attention. “So what makes Beltane different?”

“It's the spring festival,” he answers. “It's all about life and rebirth – flames, too. Fire is quite important. If you had gone back to the castle for the festival, you would have, no doubt, seen the rather spectacular bonfire there. Jumping over it tends to be quite the Beltane custom.”

“Sounds scary,” she says, and looks at their fire. “I think I prefer ours better.”

“I do too,” he says. “Fire and rebirth and growth and warmth. And joy,” he adds, thoughtful. “Usually there’s not a lot of that around, not enough to really complete my evening, but – tonight has been... exceptional in that regard.”

Blair finishes up the last of her oatmeal cake in a thoughtful sort of silence.

“You’re so... different,” she says, so softly he’s almost certain she didn’t intend on him hearing it.

“Different to what?” he wonders.

She jolts a little, and then says, “different to – how I expected you to be.”

“Surely you didn’t believe the rumours,” he says, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, no way – those rumours were _awful_ and just too ridiculous, even for you – I just thought, well...” She trails off, and then shakes her head. “I don’t know. You’re so _peaceful._ But that’s not the right word for it, it’s more like –”

“I’m not above raising a little chaos, if that’s what you’re implying,” he says, smiling slightly. “In fact, I can go and overthrow the castle tomorrow.”

“Please don’t do that,” she says, just a hint of worry to her voice – enough that he smiles at her to reassure her that he’s (mostly) speaking in jest. “No, but – usually when I think about –” She visibly struggles for words for a few seconds. “ – _you,_ I don’t think about you gardening and feeding birds and doing fire rituals in the woods, so it’s really strange – “

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow,” he says, genuinely confused. “When would I have given you the impression that I’m any different?”

“Not _you-_ you,” she says, “you, like – the general you, as – as a, an evil sorcerer, I guess-? No,” she says abruptly. “No, I’m sorry. This must not make any sense to you, it’s... sorry. It’s late.” She yawns, and it’s hard to tell how fake it is because it really is quite late at night. “Whoa. I must be really tired! I don’t usually ramble on like this.”

“It’s quite all right,” he says, now quite a bit worried and suspicious but doing his best to hide it. Blair Kenneth is quite a mystery, and he thinks he should be doing more to solve this mystery than he already is. He isn’t sure why he’s not. “It has been quite the long day for us.”

“A good one, though,” she says, leaning against him slightly.

He smiles at her. “It's good to have you here tonight, Blair.”

“It's absolutely brilliant to be here,” she says, and carefully unravels a selection of daffodils from where they've been tucked into the twists of her hair. They've gone a bit dull and limp over the course of the day, but he doesn't complain as she comes up behind him and starts weaving them into a flower crown for him to wear.

There’s a certain magic to gifts given as freely and innocently as this once – he wouldn’t go as far as to call it protection magic, but he is most certainly going to wear it for as long as he is able, because he knows it _will_ keep him safe, on some level.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did some amount of research on appropriate medieval paganistic rituals/festivals, but ultimately this is a very BBC Merlin-esque fudged AU version of the setting and quite a lot of it I modified based on the limited information I could find.


	3. Chapter 3

Mid-June is when it all comes falling apart. The sorcerer has become too comfortable – too complacent – in this new routine of his, this friendship he's struck up with Blair. It's the most natural thing in the world to come in from the garden and find her in the corner of his house; reading some books she's brought with her from the castle, or attempting to fix a broken piece of furniture with a furrowed brow and an expression of determination. It's entirely too simple to join her for walks in the forest, and conversation between them is easier than he ever could have imagined it being.

Blair is genuinely delightful to spend time with, and he is inordinately fond of her, although he'd never admit it out loud. He knows that this is most certainly a mistake on his behalf, but he can't bring himself to care.

And that's probably what makes it hurt all the more, because he comes into his home on a particularly hazy afternoon, rolling up his sleeves and tossing a satchel of flowers and herbs onto the nearby table without looking, and she's already there – having arrived home before he had.

“Good afternoon, Blair,” he greets, glancing over at her briefly as he goes to prop his staff up against the wall – and then it processes in his mind exactly where she is and what she's doing and his mind goes briefly blank with incomprehension and fury. He whirls around, a growl already building in his throat, and he's halfway across the room before he can even fully understand why. “ _What are you doing?_ ”

Blair's eyes are wide. She doesn't look _afraid_ , as such – just immensely embarrassed and a bit wary of having been caught in the act of taking notes from his magical tomes; the ones he keeps on a high shelf specifically for the purpose of keeping anyone and everyone away from them. She has a little notebook and a stick of charcoal, and the notebook pages are covered in her looping, smudged scrawl. It's more than she'd ever have been able to achieve in the short time that he's been out. She's obviously been taking notes from these books for a while.

“I'm sorry!” she says, shrinking back – even though she's clearly, visibly not. “It's – this isn't what it –”

“It _isn't what it looks like?_ ” he snarls, and tugs the book she's been studying away from her sharply, slamming it shut. “You haven't been taking the books that I expressly told you to not touch, and copying down ancient secrets like shopping lists?”

“I needed to!” she says.

“You _needed to,_ ” he says. He feels as if he’s on fire, filled with boundless rage – ants crawling underneath his skin. “Was this what all of this was about? Gaining my trust so you can gain the secrets you so desperately crave?”

“You don’t understand,” she tries. “That’s not – no! You’re my friend, and –”

“Leave!” he demands. “I've given you my trust, and you've betrayed that, Miss Kenneth! I will _not_ bequeath you any more of my valuable time, especially not if you're planning on using me as your _tool!_ ”

“No, that wasn’t –” she says, and she looks on the verge of tears. He is immensely unsympathetic.

“Out! Now!” He snatches up his staff, and swirls it in the air. Her notebook goes soaring out of her loose grasp, and into his. Silver sparks coalesce in the air, hanging around him – sharp and deadly. She shoots up out of the chair she’d been sitting in, and stumbles back a few steps. “Out!” he repeats.

“You're just being so _ridiculous_ about the whole magic thing!” she explodes, looking frustrated. “You _could_ teach me! I know you could!”

“I could!” he snaps. “But I won't, because I have no wish to share these secrets with anyone else – and you have no right to force me to do it.”

“But _why_?” she says. “Why do you not want to share it with anyone? Think of all the good it could do?”

He swings his staff around in a tight triangle against the floor, and the silver sparks go red, flanking him like an angry halo – even though his words remain perfectly calm. “I'm sorry, did you not understand me when I told you to _leave my home_? I thought I was fairly clear on that point.”

“No – yes – but –”

“I do not wish to harm you,” he says – surprised by how much he means it, despite everything – “but I will not hesitate to use force if you don't listen to what I say. Leave. My house. Please do not return.”

Her hands are clasped over her mouth, so the sob that he hears from her is fairly muffled but still entirely audible. She backs away towards the door, eyes pleading with him, but he remains resolute – pointing the end of his staff right at her until she steps through the curtains, stumbling slightly, and she's gone. He lowers the staff, and his breathing – although quite collected and steady – sounds too-loud in his head. He can hear Blair in the clearing outside, and she's audibly crying. She's also talking to herself, although it's frenetic and distressed and more or less completely unintelligible. He doesn't move a muscle.

After maybe a minute, he hears shuffling feet, and then running, and the rustling of leaves – and when he looks outside, Blair Kenneth is gone.

“Damn it,” the sorcerer says to himself, “ _damn it all,”_ because he feels _guilty_ , of all things, over this, and then he repeats, “ _damn it all!”_ – louder, this time, and brings the end of his staff down with tremendous force, and several of the glass vials containing various herbs and tinctures shatter and crack in a cacophony of faint, silvery notes. He realizes that, in his other hand, he's still holding her notebook. He goes to throw it into the fireplace, but hesitates before fully completing the gesture. He shakes his head, and tosses it onto a side table, before storming outside.

He whirls through to the garden, and to the vegetable patches. Without stopping or hesitating, he aims his staff at a particularly plump-looking watermelon, and his mouth curls up into a snarl of grim satisfaction as it explodes – shattering into hundreds of wet red-and-green chunks. He spins, directs it at a new watermelon, and the shards of it go flying in every direction, even messier than the last. He spends nearly fifteen minutes out there, wreaking absolute havoc on his own fresh produce – silently but with angry, forceful movements and a singleminded intensity that would scare anybody watching in on it all to run as far and fast as they could and never come back.

Then, in the middle of this destruction, he stops. He raises his head to the sky, breathes in deeply, and rubs at his eyes. There's nobody there to notice the wetness there, or to comment on it, or to ask him what’s wrong, but he does his best to conceal it anyway.

And when he’s perfectly calm and collected, he straightens up leaves the gruesome mess in the vegetable patch behind, and goes back inside to continue with his work – alone.

⁂

Two weeks and three days and four hours and six minutes later (but who's counting?), the sorcerer receives a visitor. She doesn't knock or announce her presence in any way, which is how he knows it isn't Blair (good, because he wouldn't have wanted to force her out or confront her once more) – and the fact that she storms into his living room, dripping water from every inch of her body and with a large metal rod slung over her shoulder, is a very good indication as to her identity. As he looks up, he sees that she's glaring at him with enough fury to make any lesser being turn tail and run for the mountains, probably screaming all the while.

“You bastard,” she says, swiping her hair out of her eyes. The glare continues. “You absolute bastard, I swear to god –”

“Miss McShane,” he greets, reaching across for his staff. He flips it so the dangerous end is pointing loosely at her, but apart from that makes no move to take up a position that is any more offensive or defensive. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She places one hand on her hip with a faint _squelch_. She is every bit the fearsome deliverer of swords and other miscellaneous items of plot importance – even drenched to the skin, apparently not having taken any time whatsoever to dry herself off before coming directly to his home. “Don't give me that. You know exactly what this is about.”

Of course he knows what it's about. He had already been aware of Blair's friendship with the Lady of the Lake, and even taking the stories and rumors of her with a grain of salt – and adding his own, rather limited, personal experience with her to the mix – it was downright inconceivable that she _wouldn't_ end up coming to confront him about his falling-out with Blair eventually.

“I rather think that the events of two weeks ago are absolutely none of your business,” he says, and watches her twitch and then visibly take several breaths to calm herself down.

“It _is_ my business when Blair comes stumbling into the castle during dinner sobbing like someone's just killed her best friend,” she says, and the sorcerer feels something deep in his chest clench unpleasantly, although he keeps his external expression perfectly smooth; unbroken. “And I've only just managed to get it out from her just what happened, and honestly? If you weren't her best friend I would have already seriously injured you by now.” She tilts her head sharply at him, and raises her eyebrows. “And honestly? I'm having serious doubts about the whole 'best friend' thing. No real friend would pull a stunt like that.”

“She is not my friend,” he says quietly, hating himself as he does.

“Uh huh,” says the Lady of the Lake, visibly unconvinced. “So you've been sitting around here for the last two weeks, acting like a kicked puppy for no reason at all?”

He draws himself up to his full height. “A _kicked puppy?!”_

“ _Yeah_ , a kicked puppy!” She throws her hands up in the air, rolls her eyes. “Oh, look at me, I'm a mighty evil sorcerer with unlimited power and knowledge of all things mortals should never touch, and I'm not going to share it with anyone! Watch me threaten my only friend's life and then sulk about how I have no friends anymore, because I've exiled her from going anywhere near me! I'm still sulking, weeks later! Look at how sad I am!”

The end of his staff goes dimly red; a warning. To her credit, she doesn't even twitch. “You're making light of a very serious situation,” he tells her. “I don't teach magic because the magic I perform can be earth-shatteringly dangerous if done incorrectly, and I am the only one I trust with that sort of knowledge. Stealing from me proves that she doesn't deserve that trust.”

“She just wants to go home.”

“That doesn't make it right.”

“I'm not saying it was the right thing to do, you know,” she says. “Even though I totally don't blame her for doing it, actually. I'm just saying, you might try to be a bit more understanding about it all!”

“Understanding? She was stealing from me!”

The Lady's growl at this was audible and nearly indistinguishable from that of a wild animal. “She's like _twelve_ , you moron! She's just a kid, and you threatened to smite her!”

“She is eighteen,” he says pointedly. “Hardly a child, by most people's standards.”

At this, the Lady falters. Her mouth opens, and then shuts, and she seems to reconsider what she's saying for a long, long moment.

“Okay,” she says, “yeah – okay. I know she's – she's not a kid.” She runs a hand through her messy hair. “God, I'd've hated hearing that at her age, that's – shit.”

“Blair can take care of herself,” he says, lowering the staff slightly. “She has full autonomy and maturity – she knew precisely what she was doing when she attempted to steal my knowledge, and she knew the potential consequences.”

“Did she, though?” The Lady meets his stare evenly. “I think she hoped you'd understand.”

“I do understand!” he insists.

“You do?”

“I –” He realizes abruptly that he doesn't. His hesitation is, apparently, telling.

“A lot of these problems would probably be solved easily if you'd just, you know, talk to her like a normal human being,” she says. “Because currently Blair is secluding herself just as much as you are, blaming herself for trying her best to just get home. And she doesn’t deserve that.”

“If she is using me as a means to an end, then I would say that she deserves a lot more than that.”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” she says flatly.

“Explain.”

“Ask her yourself! Seriously, you guys need to talk to each other – it’s the only way that this situation is going to end well for _anyone_ involved!”

“ _How?_ ” he explodes. “How in the world am I meant to talk to her when there’s –” He gestures all over; at nothing and everything at once. “ – there’s so much complication! I wouldn’t know where to begin!”

“Well, you could apologize,” she says, with the tone of someone pointing out the ridiculously obvious. “That tends to be a start when it comes to these sorts of things.”

A beat, as he processes this. “Apologize-?”

“Please tell me you know what that word means.”

“Of course I know what it means,” he says. “I only meant –”

“She’s at the castle most days,” the Lady says abruptly, cutting him off. “You should be able to find her easily. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a lake with my name on it. Literally. I'm going to go throw myself bodily into it and scream into the depths of the water for the next hour about how stupid you both are.”

The sorcerer watches, slightly bemused but mostly thoughtful, as she departs without so much as saying goodbye – leaving damp footprints in the ground outside. And as she disappears into the treeline, he's angry all over again. Not at her, at himself.

He realizes –

He realizes that he’s going to have to go the castle. It hits him like a lightning bolt and leaves him faintly dazed. He’s going to have to go to the castle and try to make things right somehow, because there’s no way that he can leave things like this between him and Blair. Not when there’s the chance – the distant opportunity – of fixing it. He _enjoys_ having a friend. She makes him better in ways he could never have dreamed of.

He realizes –

– oh dear gods, _what –_ he realizes that he may be even willing to teach her magic, if she comes back. _When_ she comes back. Nothing too earth-shattering. Simple spells, incantations, charms, and – if it’s enough to help her get home, or wherever she needs to go, then so be it. He can’t deny her that, not anymore – now that he’s realized how ridiculous the notion of withholding it is.

He looks around, grits his teeth, and starts looking for spell ingredients.

⁂

The sorcerer hasn't gone to the castle for – well, _years_ , now. The closest he's ventured is the walls, and that was quite a while ago as well, and only for experimental research purposes. He suspects he won't be welcomed very warmly at all if he appears as himself, so of course the only thing to do is to don a disguise.

He goes hunting through his old supplies, and finds an old doublet that he can't even remember obtaining, let alone wearing, and thinks _yes, good enough_. A quick spell changes his face and appearance – thin greying hair to thick and brown and curly, brown eyes to grey. It's quick enough that it won't hold up under very close scrutiny, but it will do for his purposes. That done, he takes his staff and transforms it into a more compact-looking walking stick, before setting out for the castle.

It's a pleasant enough day. He makes it there in practically record time. It's a Saturday, which means that there's a long line of people queuing up to enter the castle walls, holding baskets of fruits and vegetables and shepherding animals – it's market day. He waits impatiently, peering over the heads of the people in front of him as their wares are inspected briefly for any dangers. He _could_ just slip around the back, or blast his way in, but something holds him back from doing that. He doesn't know how much he likes this sudden weight of _morality_ weighing him down.

It's entirely too long, in his opinion, before he reaches the front of the queue and he's telling the castle guards that he has nothing to declare.

“I'm here to visit – family,” he says after a brief second of consideration.

“Are you indeed?” says a voice that he has not heard in a very long time but is, somehow, entirely too familiar. He turns sharply to see a diminutive figure holding a strange sort of staff being a shiny red handle – leaning against the wall in the shadows where he hadn't been a moment before, smiling in an inscrutable sort of manner.

The sorcerer releases a short huff of air. “Merlin,” he says.

“Apparently so, yes,” agrees Merlin, and nods at the castle guards. “Not to worry, gentlemen. He happens to be with me.”

“Am I really?” the sorcerer wonders, but allows the wizard to take his arm lightly and lead him through the gates – humming cheerfully but tunelessly all the while. “I see you've seen through my cunning disguise.”

“Not at all,” Merlin admits cheerfully. “I had no idea you were wearing anything of the sort – rumour has it that the Demon King of the Dark Woods ate you, you see.”

“Really.”

“Really. Apparently there was a rather fearsome battle between the two of you. Blood, fire, brimstone, the like. I had assumed you'd died in a terrible fashion at its hands, and had changed appearances to escape death of a more permanent sort.”

The sorcerer looks around, seeing that Merlin appears to be escorting him towards the lower town centre. “And somehow, you still knew it was me?”

“You give off a distinct aura,” says Merlin cryptically, and halts in the shade of an alleyway. The sorcerer stops, too, and folds his arms lightly across his chest. “I suppose it’s rather evident as to why you’re here – but since you’re a known enemy of Camelot, and within the castle walls, I’m somewhat obliged to ask you of your intentions.”

“I’m here to kill the king, of course,” says the sorcerer blandly.

“I see,” says Merlin, nodding. “And once more, with the truth this time...?”

The sorcerer scowls at Merlin, wanting nothing more to enter into a dramatic, showy duel to the death with him right this instant. But that would be incredibly counterproductive to what he’s trying to accomplish here, so he manages to restrain himself. “You know that I’m here to see Blair Kenneth,” he says. “To make amends.”

“My, you _have_ changed,” says Merlin, looking faintly delighted at the very prospect.

“I have _not_ ,” says the sorcerer. “And I resent the implication. I may be an evil sorcerer, but that is absolutely no excuse for being as rude and callous as I was to Blair several weeks ago – that is all this is.”

“Oh, of course,” Merlin says. ‘Faintly delighted’ has been upgraded into ‘wild grinning’. The urge to duel is becoming almost unbearable. “How silly of me. Never mind all that. I assume you’ll be apologizing, and then leaving immediately afterwards? A dastardly villain such as yourself would never dream of sticking around for longer than necessary, of course.”

He hopes it’s not quite as simple as that, but settles for saying, “we’ll see how it goes.”

“Well, good luck,” says Merlin, with a kind quirk to his lips. The sorcerer smiles back, and for a second it’s almost as if they’re on the same side again; just the two of them, against the world. And in a way, they are – united in their affection for one remarkable girl. And then he remembers their shared history, and he turns away with a slight grimace. Not another word needs to be exchanged between the two of them.

The sorcerer sets off into the busy marketplace in search of his friend.

It isn't hard to find her, not at all. In fact, he hears her voice almost instantly – bright and clear, although the words are indistinct. He navigates through the crowds, nudging people politely out of the way with the end of his staff-turned-cane, and sees a moderately large group of younger children clustered around a corner of the marketplace – where Blair sits on a pile of crates and barrels stacked up against the side of one stall. He hesitates upon seeing her. She looks a bit exhausted – there are clear rings under her eyes – but she's talking animatedly, gesturing widely with her hands, to the apparent delight of the children she's entertaining.

The sorcerer draws closer, so that he can hear what she's saying.

“– and the knight and his squire set off in search of the missing dragons,” she's saying. “They didn't know how or why they had been stolen, but they _did_ know that whoever had done it was up to no good! Now, the knight had powerful magic on his side –”

Nearby Blair and her makeshift storytelling corner – just next to where the sorcerer is standing, in fact – a man and a woman are also sitting, watching her absently as they talk. The sorcerer recognizes the man as the castle librarian, although the woman is unfamiliar to him.

“Good morning,” he says to the two of them, and indicates Blair. “Does she do this a lot?”

“Only for the last couple of weeks, really,” says the woman, and presses her lips together, before looking up at him. Her eyes are dark and sharp – intelligent. “Sorry, do I know you?”

“Hmm.” The librarian gives him an equally sharp look, and the sorcerer knows immediately that he's been seen through – and really, is it too much to ask that his carefully-crafted disguise actually works as intended? He may as well have shown up to the castle in no disguise at all. But to his surprise, the librarian doesn't do anything except nod thoughtfully and say, “be careful this time, won't you?”

“I always am,” says the sorcerer, which sounds remarkably like a lie, even to his own ears. He turns his attention back to Blair, who's still spinning her tale. He listens for a moment or two, takes in the plot and the characters and what's going on, and draws his cane out, twirling in a loose grip. He takes a step towards the storytelling circle.

Behind him, he hears the woman take a sharp breath in, and hears a sudden rustle of fabric, like she's moving to stop him – but when he casts a quick glance back, the librarian has caught her hand lightly to stop her from doing so.

“And so the duel began!” Blair is saying, with an expansive, explosive flourish of her hands to punctuate it. “The squire stared down her blade at the robber, as the knight watched from nearby. She was nervous, and had only just learnt how to use her sword, but she knew this was going to be their only chance to rescue the stolen dragons! So she steadied her shaking hands, took a step forward, and said, ‘let’s get this over with.’ And the robber grinned a horrible grin, and they both sprung forward, and –”

The sorcerer mutters a few quick words under his breath, and swirls the end of his cane-staff in the dust, frowning as he concentrates.

“ – their swords met with a _clash!_ ”

An almighty clanging – the unmistakable sound of two swords colliding – echoes through the assembled crowd of children, making quite a few of them jump, startled. Blair’s eyes go wide and she nearly falls off her precarious perch on the crates and barrels.

“What-?” she begins, and then looks down at the ground, and she sees what the sorcerer’s created, and her eyes go even wider.

There, circling each other in miniature on the ground of the town square are two figures made out of dust and sand – a menacing robber, snarling and growling, and a notably smaller squire with shoulder-length sandy hair that’s blowing in the wind. Both are carrying swords. Other dust figures are gathered off to the side of the spectacle – a tall knight, hands folded over his own sword and shoulders hunched in worry, and a number of other robbers and bandits, posing menacingly.

“ _Oh!_ ” says Blair in wonder, and sits up a bit straighter, looking wildly around the marketplace square. Most of her audience are entranced by the sandy recreation of the story she’s telling, so they don’t see her as her gaze falls upon the sorcerer, who’s standing some distance away – close enough to hear, but not looking at her. He hears an audible gasp from her, and glances over to see her staring directly at him, her hands to her mouth. He glances away again hurriedly, but it’s clear that she’s seen him – _actually_ seen him, somehow managed to recognize him through his disguise.

He really had no idea whatsoever why he bothered attempting to conceal his identity.

He smiles at her, a bit awkwardly, and raises his hand in a slight wave. Blair, eyes still as wide as dinner plates, waves back, looking stunned. Her audience’s attention is slowly returning to her, but she doesn’t appear to notice as she mutters something inaudible to herself under her breath.

The sorcerer taps his cane on the ground, then points it at his sand-based illusion, tilting his head in a silent question. For a moment, he's very nearly afraid that she's going to reject the offer, but after another few seconds of staring at him, she takes an almost exaggeratedly deep breath, and then another, and she says, “the robber came in towards the squire quickly and fiercely, but he was too overconfident! The angle he took was the wrong one to use, and anybody with five minutes' worth of sword-fighting experience would know that – and the squire had slightly more than that much experience. So then –”

She narrates the fight, beat by beat and clash by clash. The sand puppets act it out with unerring perfection, and the sorcerer throws in sound effects wherever necessary. The story continues to unfold, and the sand pantomime continues to mirror it to the best of the sorcerer's considerable abilities. The squire defeats the robber fairly and squarely, flipping his sword right out of his hands – to a round of applause and some whooping from their audience – and the knight steps in to prevent a catastrophe.

“And the knight said –” Blair's voice drops to a deeper pitch, and she affects a harsh whisper. “‘'You were defeated; fair is fair. Now drop. The sword.' And the robber did, instantly!”

Some of the children cheer. Apparently the knight is a crowd favorite.

Blair keeps talking. She jumps down from her crate pile and starts hopping around the perimeter of the arena that's formed – wherein the dramatized version of her story is taking place. She talks about the dragon's recovery, and their return to their rightful owner, and the feast that the knight and the squire attend. She's almost maniac in her delivery – she loves what she's doing, that much is clear; and by the way she's looking at the sand stage and bouncing whenever the puppets execute any particularly impressive bits of choreography, she's delighted to have that there as well. But there's something tense and nervous about how she's holding herself.

The squire and the knight climb onto the back of the largest dragon and they take off, spiraling upwards into the clear mid-morning sky. The sorcerer takes some artistic liberty – the knight ruffles the squire's hair fondly, the squire laughs and bumps him with her shoulder – and then they're high up enough that they're out of sight, and he raises his staff-cane upwards. The scene freezes and then the sand explodes into bright sparks of every color that shower down on all the onlookers, becoming bubbles as they float downwards.

For a few seconds, he watches as the delighted crowd of children begins to run around, trying to pop the bubbles (which are actually indestructible, because he has to get his evil in where he can take it) – so when Blair comes up to him, and touches his arm gently to get his attention, he actually jumps and exclaims in shock.

“I'm sorry!” she says immediately, backpedalling. “I didn't mean to startle you, I just –”

“It's perfectly all right, my dear, I was only lost in thought –”

“ – needed to apologize, properly; I shouldn’t have done that and it was _wrong_ and –”

“ – really have been an old fool about all of this – ”

“ – you all right? You’ve changed – is it bad, did you do something to yourself-?”

“It’s only an illusion,” says the sorcerer hastily, and lifts it briefly – long enough that she can see him as he usually is, underneath it – before reinstating it, for all the good it’ll do him. “I’m afraid my presence isn’t very welcome at the castle, but I had to come and see you, so – needs must.”

“Oh, _good_.” Blair looks incredibly relieved by this revelation. “I saw you, and I was worried that – well – nevermind.”

“How _did_ you know it was me?” The sorcerer asks, genuinely curious.

“Oh – well, there was just something about you, I guess? It – ” She cuts herself off abruptly, catching onto something he’d said a few seconds previously. “You came to _apologize?_ ”

“Yes. You didn’t deserve what I said to you,” says the sorcerer frankly. “I’m sorry, Blair. I overreacted.”

“You didn’t,” Blair says, almost instantly. “If I had told someone not to touch a very important possession of mine multiple times, and they went and touched it anyway, I’d be mad too.”

“True enough,” he allows. “But in hindsight, and upon further consideration, my reaction to that happening was purely emotional and not at all based in rational thought. I threatened you. It was uncalled for. We could have talked it out calmly, but I refused to let that happen, and I fear I might have pushed you away in the process. Once again. I apologize. And...” He reaches into his cloak, and pulls out her notebook. “I’m afraid I did end up reading it,” he says softly. “But I felt that returning it to you was the only thing I could really do – although I know there’s no making up for what I’ve done.”

Apart from the notes taken from his own books, there’s nothing particularly incriminating about it in the least. The personal entries are mostly notes on good things that have happened – how she had found a wild berry grove on one particular Tuesday – with occasional bouts of vaguely worded melancholy that had left him in no doubt as to the veracity of her ‘just wanting to go home’ claims.

She takes the notebook, and looks at it for a very long moment, unspeaking.

“Thank you. For my notebook, and for apologizing, too,” she says eventually, and lets out a shaky breath. She reaches for the satchel around her shoulder, and tucks it carefully back into the main pouch before redoing the latch up. “I’d – I should also apologize. I shouldn’t have snuck around behind your back and gone into your things. I _swear_ I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you or do anything bad – I just wanted to get home.”

“We’re all looking for home,” says the sorcerer somewhat wistfully. “And although your methods were somewhat objectionable – I can understand that. Apology accepted – thank you, Blair.”

“So – does this mean that I can come back to your house, then?” she says, almost hesitantly.

“Only if you want to,” he’s quick to assure her. “And...” He sighs, and commits to it. “If you want me to – and I’m nearly certain that you do – I’d also be willing to teach you... some things.”

“...some things.”

“Such as... magic.”

She actually gasps aloud, and bounces several times, hands to her mouth, before she halts and looks at him carefully. “Are – are you _sure?_ Because you’ve said so many times, you don’t want to teach anyone, and if this is just you trying to apologize –”

“It’s not,” the sorcerer says, cutting her off. “This is not an apology. This is me realizing that I’ve been completely unreasonable about my habitual secret-keeping. And if I must choose anybody in the world as my apprentice – to teach magic to – I can’t imagine anyone more suited to the task than you, my dear.”

“Oh,” she says, eyes a bit watery. “That’s – thank you.” She clears her throat. “I... should probably say, though – I don’t know how long I’ll be staying here.”

“If you find a way home, you mean?” he asks, and she nods. “I expected as much. Do not worry yourself over that. I wouldn’t have extended the offer if I hadn’t considered the possibilities. Your willingness to learn is all I need.”

She nods again, and then grins and bounces again. “In that case – that sounds amazing! I’d love to be your apprentice.”

“Then – traditionally, that sort of things starts like this. Hold onto my staff.” He offers it to her, and she carefully wraps a hand around it, just under his. There’s a moment where nothing happens, but then the crystal on the top sparks and sputters into life – a steady white light emanating from the top, without either of them having said or done anything. He smiles. “There we are.”

“Magic,” she says in wonder.

“Magic,” he agrees, and smiles. “Shall we begin?”


	4. Chapter 4

Blair takes to magic like an enthusiastic duck taking to water. This is another one of these things that he really should have predicted in advance, but somehow neglected to. He shows her how to produce magic from the end of a makeshift wand crafted out of a tree branch – how to light fires and to make things hover, suspended in midair. He teaches her how to control and direct water, and the next day they’re out near the river, splashing each other and soaking their clothes and giggling like children all the while. The secret of making fruit and vegetables grow large and healthy is more difficult, but she still manages to master it relatively quickly – and with all four basic elemental skills acquired in less than a month, he feels it’s completely appropriate to move onto other, more complex magical feats.

“It’s not all about calculations and research,” he says, pushing books off the table to make room for chalk scribblings. “If you want to attempt a complex and expansive spell to help you ‘get home’, wherever that may be, there has to be some amount of intuition involved.”

“Right,” says Blair, nodding. “How does that work?”

He sits down across from her, and hands her a stick of chalk. “Magic is a living force – one that holds together the world we live in, more or less. You can’t just think of it as a tool – treat it as a friend, an equal partner in what you’re trying to achieve. It will usually want to help you, so let it. Make your plans for the ritual, practice it in small-scale. Feel how the magic reacts to that, and modify it accordingly.”

“Like swimming with the current rather than trying to swim against it?” Blair asks.

“Precisely,” he says, smiling. “Now, when it comes to ritual circles –”

And they’re off again, drawing and sketching and comparing. Rituals are tricky things, and getting one right for such a precise yet indistinct purpose will be a tough journey indeed. But they have time – all the time in the world, really.

He blinks, and it’s August. At his cave, he and Blair pore over books, and pinpoint the best day for the final ritual to take place – October thirty-first; another festival day and a powerful one at that. It’s nearly a month away, but growing closer with every passing second, minute, hour, day.

It isn’t all work, of course. Some days they forgo chalk-stained fingers and magic lessons for walking in the forest, or visiting friends in the forest or lake, or even venturing up to the castle on market days. The sorcerer dons a different disguise this time, but Merlin sees Blair with him and gives him a knowing smile and a nod, as if to say, _this is all right by me._ As if he has authority to give permission.

The sorcerer would really like to fight him, but manages to restrain himself admirably for Blair’s sake.

September. Her hair’s grown long enough that it’s spilling down her back and tangling and getting in the way even when she ties it back. The blue streak’s completely gone. He offers to redye it somehow, but she just shakes her head and tells him she’s got more important things to worry about.

They go down to the water’s edge together, and the Lady of the Lake finds a pair of moderately rusty shears in the depths and helps Blair trim it back to a more manageable, if slightly ragged, level. It’s a pleasant afternoon out, and the Lady and the sorcerer hardly argue at all.

She’s getting better at magic, and he’s so proud of her that he’s astounded he’s able to contain it within himself rather than just spontaneously exploding, somehow.

He finds her in the garden one day, wand flashing through the air as flowers, berries, and assorted seeds arrange themselves into wreaths and chains that hang themselves neatly on the surrounding trees. Within minutes, birds are flocking to the location and soon the clearing is filled with them. Blair laughs, delighted, and brushes birdseed off of her tunic before settling down cross-legged at the base of a particularly old and towering tree.

“Very nicely done,” he tells her, coming over to join her under the branches.

“Thanks!” she says. “Magic is _fun_.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” he says, and tilts his head back so he can watch the birds with her. The truth is, he’s rather enjoying himself as well – more than he has in years, as a matter of fact. Teaching is a joy, and teaching Blair is even better, and he mildly despises his past self for being so closed-minded as to dismiss the idea completely. Quite honestly? He never wants this to end.

⁂

And then the day comes – Samhain, just as scheduled. A day when the boundaries between worlds loosen and become easier to navigate – the perfect day for a ritual like this. The sorcerer has known that it would come for quite some time now – since the moment he agreed to help Blair craft her spell – but that doesn’t mean it stings any less. She’s gathered all of her possessions in her satchel – at some point borrowing it from the librarian’s friend had become a rather permanent thing – and the sorcerer is helping her set up the final parts of the ritual.

Blair’s drawing the circle in chalk on the ground, her tongue sticking out slightly as she concentrates, comparing it to her notebook; and the sorcerer’s placing the candles around the perimeter of the circle. He finishes before she does, and takes a second to regard her – commit every inch of her to memory.

“Done!” she says, placing the chalk to the side. “Double-checked, too – I think everything’s ready!”

“Congratulations,” he says, and means it. It’s no small feat, to learn this amount of magic within a matter of months, especially to the degree that she’s managed it. He smiles at her, and picks up the chalk. “Before you depart – it’s always best to travel on a full stomach. Shall we?”

She sits up a bit straighter, and her eyes go wide in that way that they tend to. “You made dinner?”

“Cooking over the bonfire is a Samhain tradition,” he says.

“I though that was Beltane?” She stands up, brushes the dust and chalk off her tunic, and follows him outside, beaming.

“That too. There do tend to be a lot of fire-related traditions when it comes to seasonal festivals.”

He’s broken out his entire spice cupboard, ransacked most of his garden, and pulled in a few favours from the castle, and as they make their way towards the already-roaring bonfire, the meat is cooking itself – aided by a little bit of magic, of course. The evening is clear and crisp and the stars are bright above them. It couldn’t be a more perfect night for a very final goodbye party.

The sorcerer hands Blair a plate, and they serve themselves before sitting down to eat together. He doesn’t know quite what to say, but that’s all right because Blair is perfectly willing to fill the silence. She talks about friendship and magic and climbing trees and stories – shares fantastic tales of swords and betrayal that seem too intricate to be entirely made up, and talks about things that they’ve done together – their Demon King gambit, searching for treasure and herbs in the forest, excursions to the castle. And soon the conversation is flowing easily between them. There’s so much to talk about and so little time to do it in, so they lose themselves in it.

The sorcerer only notices how late it is when he looks over and sees that the bonfire’s burnt all the way down to glowing orange embers. The food’s been abandoned for hours, now – they’ve been entirely too engrossed in conversation and laughter to eat.

Blair looks over at the fire, too, and sighs – a tiny, sad little noise of disappointment, and says, “I’ll go light the candles.”

She stands up, and hurries off towards the cave and her chalk circle, and he sets off packing away the remains of their food and snuffing out the fire. When it’s all done and he’s alone in the darkness, he just stands there for a second or two, gazing up at the moon. It’s round and full tonight, bright yellow hanging amongst the stars – ‘werewolf night’, Blair had called it.

Everything has to end, eventually, he reminds himself. Change isn’t necessarily tragic in its own right – it just signals a change in circumstance. At least it’s not ending on a bad note, this time.

“Ready!” Blair says, voice floating across to him from the inside of his home.

He gathers up everything in his hands, and walks in to meet her. The circle is lit up – all seven candles glowing golden, flickering slightly in the evening air. She’s checking the chalk markings again, which he very much approves of. Failure to get it right at this point could result in consequences of the most catastrophic kind.

“This is it, then,” the sorcerer says, leaning his weight heavily against his staff.

“Yeah,” Blair says, looking up at him. She blinks, and then she wipes a hand across her face. Her tears are shiny, almost like liquid gold in the candlelight. She rises to her feet, looking like she’s about to say something very final indeed. She’s already said goodbye to everyone back at the castle and in the forest nearby – had spent days doing so, exchanging gifts and farewells with all her friends. It’s just him, now.

It scares him like almost nothing ever has before.

Blair takes a deep breath, and then opens her mouth.

“Wait,” he says, before she can do anything like begin the ritual before he’s entirely ready. “I have... a gift for you.”

“Oh!” she says, surprised, and then, as he pulls out the gift itself out from behind the bookshelf, where he’s been hiding it, “ _oh._ Oh my gosh – this is – ”

He presses the slightly smaller replica of his own staff gently but firmly into her hands. The wood had taken him weeks to carve and core, and there’s a bright blue crystal embedded in its tip. “All good sorcerers should have a tool to channel their magic through.” He pats her hand. “The stick you’re using probably won’t quite cut it for a task of this magnitude, anyway.”

She holds it up, fingers wrapping around its centre, before flipping it back and forth through the air like he usually does – apparently testing the weight. Shock and amazement play all over her face. “It’s – thank you! It’s perfect!” She sets it carefully on the ground, and then launches herself at him, pulling him into an enthusiastic, delighted hug, which he gladly reciprocates, smiling. “It’s so cool and it’s balanced so nicely – thank you thank you _thank you!_ ”

“You’re very welcome,” he tells her.

Quicker than he’d expected, she releases from the hug, and hops back a few steps, scooping up the staff. Her hand curls around it like she’s always had it, and she chews on her bottom lip for a second. “I did something for you, but I don’t know if – well.” She takes a deep breath. “Come on. I’ll show you. This’ll probably help!” She adds, indicating her new staff.

He follows Blair to the doorway, tilting his head curiously, and watches as she takes a few steps forward, and plants the staff in the ground. She casts a nervous glance over her shoulder, as if checking for approval, and then takes a deep breath before muttering something short and melodic under her breath. For a second, it doesn’t appear to have worked, but then the crystal on the end of her staff glows blue, and so does the ground.

She laughs, and spins around to meet him. “Here we go,” she says, and the ground around his house erupts.

All along the edge of the house, in a neat perimeter, green leaves sprout from the ground so fast it’s all just a blur – unfurling and shooting upwards until they’re as tall as he is. It’s only seconds before it’s all over, and there’s a row of new plants circling the edge of the cave – standing tall, silent and solemn. Plants with flowers – flowers that he’s never seen before in his extremely long life.

“You probably shouldn’t show anyone these,” she says. “Or plant them anywhere else, because that might mess a lot of things up, but... they’re really pretty. And I thought you might like them.”

The sorcerer steps forward, and raises a hand to cup the side of one of these new, unfamiliar flowers. The diameter of the petals is larger than his head, and even in the dim starlight, he can see that they’re a bright yellow, almost glowing gold. He lets his hand drop, and sees that the heads of all of the other flowers are facing directly east – their faces upturned to the dark sky, as if waiting for something.

“Oh, Blair,” he says. “These are – you are – ” He’s lost for words for a moment, and then he finds one that’s rather appropriate. “ – _wonderful._ What are-?”

“Sunflowers,” she says, grinning as brightly as any of them.

“Sunflowers,” he says, tasting the name in his mouth. He touches a finger to one of them, and watches it bob up and down. “...thank you.”

“They face the sun, whenever it’s up,” she says eagerly, “and you can use their seeds for food, and –” She breaks off abruptly, holding a hand to her mouth, and it takes a moment for him to realize that she’s muffling a sob. “Sorry. Sorry! I’m just – oh, I’m going to miss you!”

“And I you, my dear,” he says.

It’s impossible to say which of them instigates the hug this time. It’s long and tight and she buries her head into his shoulder and just stays there – as still and immovable as any of the trees surrounding them.

“You should go,” he says after a minute or an eternity. “Midnight is soon.”

“I know,” she says, and keeps holding on.

“I have to ask you a question before you do,” he says, and reluctantly, she withdraws.

“Sure,” she says, and her eyes are red. She wipes at them, swiping a sleeve across her face a couple of times, and nods. “Go ahead.”

“You’re not from... here,” he says. “Are you?”

She goes silent and still for a moment. “I mean, I am trying to get home,” she says. “So, no, I don’t live – ”

“That’s not what I meant,” he says. “You’re from another world entirely.” He leans against his staff. “I’ve suspected for a while, really, but seeing your notes on this ritual confirmed it for me. Why not tell me?”

A moment of hesitation, and then she nods, slowly – a confirmation. “It was... well, it was complicated. At first, I didn’t think you’d believe me. And then I realized how different you were, and I was worried that you would, and that you _would_ believe me, and that you’d get yourself into my world and do something horrible. And then I realized that you wouldn’t do that, but I’d already started trying to learn magic on my own, and then – after all those things happened, you were helping me get home anyway, and... it felt like things had gone too far for me to actually tell you about it.”

“I see,” he says slowly, and then, “how did you come to be here, in this world?”

She takes a few steps back, and tugs on a strand of her own hair, looking contemplative. “There was an explosion,” she says. “We were on a planet – well, we were somewhere with a lot of timespace inconsistency, and we were trying to figure out a way to restore it to normal, and... something went wrong, and I guess I fell through. And then I was here.”

He doesn’t understand a large amount of this, but nods anyway. “‘We’,” he says.

“Me and the – ” She hesitates, looking up at him. “My friend.”

“My counterpart,” the sorcerer guesses, already knowing that he’s right.

“Yeah, he’s – _wait._ Hang on! How on earth did you know _that?_ ”

“Many reasons,” he says – dry, with a hint of amusement. “But as for the most indicative – you were surprised to see me at first, but not scared – never scared of me. I doubt that you’d have had the same reaction if you didn’t know me already, somehow.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she says.

“The other me – what is he like?” he asks, before he can stop himself.

“You’re a lot alike, actually!” she says after a second of consideration. “Which also makes sense. But there’s a lot of things that are different too. He’s not a sorcerer – well, not really, not in the way that you are. And he’s...” She hesitates. “...a bit less reclusive than you are. Oh, and he doesn’t like plums.”

“What? _Preposterous,_ ” says the sorcerer, genuinely offended by the very concept.

“I _know!_ I keep telling him to just give them a try, but he refuses on principle.”

He feels a stab of something that’s almost like jealousy for his alternate self – a version of him who is fortunate enough to travel with Blair all of the time – who Blair is now going back to. He very much hopes his other self appreciates her for all that she is worth.

“I’d like to stay here,” she says quietly, evidently noticing this. “Really, I would. Everyone’s so nice and I’ve learnt so many things in the last few months, but... I just don’t belong here. There’s all my people, and they’re my friends, but – they’re just a little bit to the left, and it’s not quite right, and sometimes they say things and I think, ‘oh, right, they never did that with me’ or ‘they don’t like that, here’, and it’s... strange. They’re nice, but they’re not my family. I miss my family.” She looks up, as if realizing that he’s there, and by her apologetic wince, he knows that he was included in that. It hurts, for a moment, but then comes a serene sort of acceptance as he sees it from her point of view.

“I understand,” he tells her.

“There’s also always the possibility that there’s another version of me here as well,” she blurts. “Like – I haven’t met her? But if Ace and Benny and Lisar can be here, I could be here – but I don’t know. I’m rambling.”

“If I ever do meet her, I’ll be sure to say hello,” he says. He doesn’t know what to think about this sudden revelation. It’s hard to process. He’ll have to give it some thought.

“ _Would_ you? Thank you!” Blair gives him a double thumbs-up, which he’s taken to mean some gesture of approval or assent. “I think she might need a friend. If she exists, I mean. She’s probably pretty alone, and – when I was her, I sure did.”

He smiles, as kindly as he can. “Go home, Blair,” he tells her. “I think it’s about time you did.”

“One last thing,” she says, and taps his hand. “Find a name. Please?”

He smiles at her. “I’ve already chosen one, if you can believe it. I’m not certain I’m prepared to share it with anybody else quite yet, but – ” He leans down, and whispers it into her ear – a secret between the two of them, and nobody else.

“I think it’s perfect,” she says, and hugs him again. “You’re going to do great when I’m gone, I just _know_ it.”

“I hope so,” he says, and then. “The other me. You’re friends, yes?”

“Oh, yes,” she says, with a glowing smile. “The best.”

“I’m glad,” he says, meaning it. “And in that case, we should really get you back to him – I’m sure he’s missing you terribly.”

“Right!” she says, straightening up. “Of course! Let me, um – ” She relights one of the candles that’s gone out while they’ve been outside, and steps carefully into the chalk matrix she’s drawn on the floor, holding her staff carefully by her side. “Okay,” she says. “Bye.”

“Goodbye,” he says, ruffling her hair one last time, and then he steps back to the edge of the room. “Ready?”

“Ready,” she says, and begins the ritual – speaking briskly in an all-but forgotten language, the words tripping off her tongue somewhat awkwardly but completely understandably. It takes ten seconds for the circle to start to glow at her feet, chalk going blindingly white, and ten seconds after that for her hair to start rising around her, caught in a non-existent wind. She open her eyes and they’re glowing blue, and she grins at him as she continues to speak – drawing the staff around in precise movements and then tightly to her chest. It’s remarkable to witness, but he can see her fingers trembling as they clutch at the staff.

The ritual takes five minutes in total. The sorcerer waits and watches, hardly daring to breathe. She seems to be managing fine, but in these situations, there’s always the possibility of error – some imperceptible mistake, some external factor that will easily tear the whole thing to shreds.

She comes to the end of it, and for a second it seems as if nothing’s going to happen – but then there’s a spark and a flicker, and then she goes up in glorious bright flames. Feet first, then the rest of her body, and then quicker than he can blink, she’s completely engulfed in them. It’s what’s supposed to happen, of course, but it’s still startling to witness.

She starts flaking away quicker than he thought she would – disintegrating into nothing before his eyes. Her head is the last bit of her to go – and he sees her turn to him and mouth ‘ _thank you_ ’.

“You are very, _very_ welcome,” he says. “I should be thanking you.”

She grins, and then she’s gone.

Silence.

He’s alone in his cave once more. The candles remain in place, all neatly snuffed out and faintly smoking. The circle is, of course, gone – as is Blair. There’s nothing at all to show that she had been there in the first place.

The sorcerer lets out a breath that he hadn’t been aware he was holding, and then laughs. He hopes Blair has made it back home, of course, but there’s no way to be certain. Hoping is all he can do.

He packs away the candles and other assorted ritual implements, filing them all away carefully. The interior of the cave is smoky and hazy from the candles and magic, so he pushes open the curtains to let the cool air in. He halts near the window, and looks out – at the garden, at the forest, at the rows of sunflower heads bobbing silently and calmly in the light evening breeze.

He smiles at them, and watches them for a minute or two before turning away. It’s very late indeed, he thinks. There will be time for grief and cleaning up tomorrow, but for now – rest seems like an excellent idea.

Maybe tomorrow, he’ll go to the castle.

⁂

Blair arrives home with a shout of alarm and a burst of radiant light, sliding across the ground and nearly smashing head-first into the wall of the console room before she manages to halt herself. She’s still holding onto the staff as tightly as she can, and she struggles to get properly to her feet, looking wildly around. It’s all there – the sepia-toned walls, the glowing roundels stretching up to the ceiling, the immense feeling of warmth and belonging that surrounds her and tightens around her as she becomes properly aware of it. She’s crying before she even fully registers how emotional she is. She’s _home._ She’s really, properly home.

“Blair?” says a voice – a very, _very_ familiar voice – and the Master steps out from behind the console, eyes wide behind his round ivory-rimmed spectacles. There’s exhaustion in every inch of his body, but he’s beginning to straighten up, staring at her with awe and amazement. “Blair! How did you-?”

He looks so similar to the sorcerer, but so, _so_ different. There’s a weird moment where Blair wonders outright where his staff’s gone, before she realizes – there’s no staff, no cave, no strange anger bubbling behind everything he does despite trying his best to hide it. It’s just the Master. Her friend. Her _best_ friend.

“Surprise,” she chokes out, swaying slightly on her feet. She plants her staff into the floor to ground herself, and then promptly abandons it so she can stumble towards the Master.

He’s saying something, speaking at top speed with all the words spilling out of his mouth in complete astonishment – which doesn’t happen often, but she isn’t paying all that much attention. She collides with him, arms wrapping tightly around his waist. He instantly falls to his knees, hands going up to her shoulders, and she just buries her head in his coat and breathes. The other him had smelled like strange herbs and smoke and always just a faint trace of ozone, but he smells like tea leaves and old paper and time. Oh, she had _missed_ him.

He’s trying to pry her away from him – gently but firmly, but she really doesn’t want to move. “Look at me – come on, Blair, just look at me for a moment, _please._ ”

“‘M fine,” she insists. “Just a minute...”

She feels rather than hears him sigh, and then his arms go properly around her back. “You had me worried sick, you know.”

“Sorry,” she says. “Didn’t mean to leave you along for so long.”

“One month,” he says, and shakes his head. “I thought you had died. I really did. That explosion...”

“You can’t get rid of me _that_ easily,” she says, and then his words register properly. “One month? It’s been more like seven for me.”

“ _Seven months?_ ” At this, he draws back, and cups her face in between his hands so as to examine her properly. She pulls a face at the treatment, but sits through it patiently enough. “I see. This is a very rough haircut,” he says after a moment.

“Medieval scissors,” she says, by means of explanation.

“Medieval?” He looks at her sharply. “That was a parallel dimension – you were in a medieval dimension for _seven months?_ How did you get back? Are you all right?”

“I’m great, actually,” she says, astonished that she means it. “I mean, I missed you – but, you were there! Sort of.”

“Explain,” he says, sitting back. “Tell me everything.”

And she does. She tells him about arriving in a strange land with nothing but the clothes she had been wearing when she feel through the rift, about finding her way to the castle and meeting that universe’s version of the Doctor, completely by chance. About how he’d tried to help her, but ultimately hadn’t had the power, and had done his due best to redirect her to someone who could actually help.

She tells him about the strange lonely sorcerer living deep in the woods who had shared his face and personality, but not his morbid dislike of plums – about befriending him, and spending time with him and sword fights and cooking and feeding birds, and about magic. _Real_ magic, not just theatrics and technology.

She talks about meeting the other Lisar – a druid, living in the forest – and how the other versions of Benny and Brax and all her other friends from the Academy had been there in some form, and how they had helped her out after her falling out with the sorcerer – and about her job keeping the children in the marketplace entertained while their parents bartered and shopped and sold. She describes the apology, and everything that had come afterwards – everything leading up to how she had managed to open up a new rift and send herself home.

“That sounds like... _quite_ the adventure,” he says when she’s done. He shakes his head. “That’s, quite frankly, incredible. I’m aware of the multiverse’s existence, and the improbability of the universes contained within it, of course, but for you to have coincidentally ended up in a universe where a large number of people you know already exist? Your luck is astonishing.”

“I know,” she says, and shivers slightly. “I can’t imagine what I’d’ve done if you weren’t there.”

“And the existence of magic as a functional, empirical tool!” he continues. “I can scarcely believe it.”

Blair’s about to tell him more about magic, because he seems really interested in it and she knows a lot about it by now – then she realizes that she doesn’t have to do that, because she can just _show_ him. She scrambles for her staff, and holds it up. Watch this!” she says, beaming, and mutters the familiar words of a simple incantation to summon fire, because that’s the easiest way to demonstrate this. Nothing happens, and her face falls. She tries it again – quicker, this time – but nothing happens, still.

“Oh,” she says, crestfallen – realizing abruptly what the problem is. “Oh _no –_ there’s no magic here.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology – ” the Master begins, coming over to examine the staff, but she shakes her head.

“No, it’s... you, the other you, he said that magic holds the world that they live in together, like a living force. But this isn’t that world. I don’t think magic actually exists here!” Which is – well, actually, it hurts. Quite a lot. Like a missing limb she hadn’t been aware she’d be missing up until now. She’d been living with that magical flow and force besides her for over half a year – and towards the end of it, had been working alongside it with it as her partner. And now it’s just... gone. She’s aware that the likelihood of her ever meeting again is very, _very_ low. She lowers her staff. “I... really wanted to show you,” she says softly. “I was getting so good at it, too.”

“I daresay you were, considering you managed to open up a rift between dimensions with it,” the Master agrees, although his face is solemn and his tone is too. He looks just as disappointed as she feels – as if he’d been excited to see the existence and proof of actual, real magic.

“It’s just a staff now,” she says in defeat, running a hand along the blue crystal at the top. She recognizes it – from one of the windchimes the sorcerer had always kept strung on the outside of the windows. It had glowed then – and had glowed even brighter when she had channelled magic through it. It’s dull now – pretty, but with no power at all in it.

“Exceptionally well-made, though,” says the Master. “I’m impressed at the craftsmanship.”

“Well, yeah,” she says, with a slight smile. “I mean – you _did_ make it.”

He laughs at that. “May I see?”

She nods, and passes it to him – but as soon as the wood of the staff touches his hands, there’s a crackle like electricity running all around the room, and the lights in the TARDIS briefly dim all around them.

The two of them freeze, both their hands still on the staff, and Blair gasps as she sees the faint, dim light of the blue crystal’s glow illuminating both their faces. It’s not much, but it’s definitely there. And she can feel it – a thin, thready pull of a very familiar sensation.

“Is that-?” the Master asks, eyes bright with astonishment.

“Yes!” she says, tone hushed. She reaches out and brushes a hand over the edge of the crystal. It dims and fluctuates at her touch, but it remains glowing – weak, but stubbornly still there, as if in defiance at the lack of magic in the world that it exists in.

“Magic,” the Master whispers, awestruck.

“Magic,” she agrees, grinning – because as long as he’s with her, everything is, in more ways than one. “Shall we begin?”

**end**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunflowers were introduced to England in the [early 16th century](http://theconversation.com/making-sunlight-liquid-a-brief-history-of-sunflowers-99418). This story plays fast and loose with actual Earth history, because it's an alternate universe and also there's magic, but it's probably somewhere between the 5th and 15th centuries if actual medieval England is anything to go by. Also, all the notes for Beltane earlier apply to Samhain in this chapter.
> 
> Thank you for reading!! If you've made it this far, I very much hope you've enjoyed it - and if, for some reason, you've read it all without having previously read the EITU series, you're considering checking it out now. Because it really is just very very good.
> 
> also rae i love you. you're a very good friend and an awesome amazing writer to boot
> 
> All right that's it goodbye and goodnight! ❤


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